Inevitable
by Mongoosey
Summary: We're still running, aren't we? FUTUREFIC, sort of. Incest, implied incest, sorrow, implied rape, thematic elements. Life's little tragedies and slow miracles and everything inbetween.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: A Series of Unfortunate Events belong to "Lemony Snicket" and/with David Handler. I do not own the characters. Repetition is key. I do not own the characters. Repetition is key.**

**Author's Unfortunately Slightly Sarcastic Note**: **Incest**. For someone's sake, don't read it if you don't like or can't handle the concept of **incest **or the thought of **Violet/Klaus**. And for **Bowling Jesus'** sake, if you still do, don't "review".

"Reviews" that consist of "Eww, gross. U iz sik" and "I'm sorry, but I totally do not see the Violet/Klaus incest pairing. Try another one next time. Thank you for hearing my pointless opinion" are deemed irrelevant by the author and will sadly be deleted (in the case of an anonymous account) and ignored thereafter, since it will possibly-sadly-cease to exist. I just want to practice writing. That's all. Lastly, this is for the malnourished V/K community and the theory that, if everyone had separate, non-related parents, the world would be terribly overpopulated today. Think about it.

This here is also a prologue, and the style is not how the story will be written. It only outlines and foreshadows the story as a painting or moving picture at most. Yes, this will be a series.

**Inevitable**

**An Unlucky Prologue**

_Easy as ever, the night slowly fogs the seeing distance beyond the train._

_The eldest child, who we now recognize as a Violet Baudelaire, stares out the window in a failed attempt to see beyond the night and into the face of whatever was coming next. She spies shadows of trees and outlines of lakes and senses the silence outside._

_But she still lifts her delicate fingers to the glass, fogging into imprints even before they touch the inevitable coolness._

_That's when she notices that the inside of the train is unnaturally warm._

_The leather seats, we can imagine, feel sticky and uncomfortable from previous passengers, but her two younger siblings do not seem to mind, for they are both asleep with drooping heads and leveled breathing. She manages a tiny smile at them before surrendering her attention again to the outside deep._

_In this moment, we can observe the morose beauty of the form of a girl no older than seventeen and, intertwined in her right hand, the same beauty in a velvet black ribbon, also, sadly, seventeen. _

_In a year she will be eighteen but she doesn't think of that, mainly for fear of a sudden shift in emotional elevation and she probably prefers that we don't discuss that now._

_What Count Olaf regarded years earlier has only been, up until now, experienced by her two siblings, easily understood if it weren't for her tricky eyes. That, of course, refers to her sinister beauty. Sinister, in this case, meaning Baudelaire, a deliciously rolling (supposedly French) word that evokes the nature of sin._

_Unfortunately, and also up until now, the Baudelaires have been anything but sinful, an irony that still haunts._

And… 

_This is where we follow the grace of her cheekbones onto the slippery slope of her neck and unto the slightly freckled shoulders then to the black lace until about a left turn to the supple crocheted skin of her inner arm where her pretty hand is knotted with the beginnings of her brother._


	2. Inevitebel

**Disclaimer**: **Not mine. Daniel Handler's/Lemony Snicket's characters and unfortunate events.**

Author's Note: Two reviews is the most I've ever gotten for one chapter. Yessss. Chapter One is fairly clean, but as you must remember, the darker, more "human" parts come later. Song excerpts only show my inspiration for a particular chapter. This, by no means, is a "songfic". Any which way, enjoy.

* * *

Chapter One:

**in-ev-i-te-bel**

_People always told me be careful of what you do  
And don't go around breaking young girls' hearts  
And mother always told me, "Be careful of who you love  
And be careful of what you do 'cause the lie becomes the truth"_

_-"Billy Jean"_

Cold September and already the leaves were falling fast.

When she glanced out the kitchen window (she always washed dishes in the early evening) she noticed the clouds creeping up into the sky, and the sky blinking colors like water. The prettiest time of day had to be this time, the in-between. Nothing stirred the soul-her soul-before this time. The morning, inconsequential, and the night, inconceivable.

She smiled softly to herself as her ears picked up the sound of buttons clicking and spinning mechanics. An onomatopoeia there, a scrub here, and she swore her heart lightened with domestic bliss.

Light jazz greeted her like an old friend. _Purple_ this, _my baby ain't crying anymore_, _I'm your shoulder forever but I'd rather be your heart_…that last bit was unintelligible.

"Klaus, honey, who's singing this?" She picked up the wineglass, the one with the glass embroidery, and began wiping the edges gingerly.

The sound of plastic popping (the cassette case) caused her smile to inch wider.

"Someone named Beretta Jones. Spectacular voice, don't you think?" a voice hollered from the living room. She heard some other shuffling, then, "I'm pouring a whiskey. Do you want anything?"

She peered through the wineglass as her hand brought it closer to the light. The barely visible crack glistened with droplets as she examined. Satisfied, she set it down. "Rum and coke, please!"

"Are you serious?"

"Very!"

She knew just as well that he thought that rum and coke were for ninnies, girls who couldn't handle themselves.

'Well,' she thought to herself, 'Is it my fault that I can't stand the taste of hard liquor?' Not expecting an answer (as that would be silly) she began shifting around the sink with her soapy hands, searching for a lost sponge.

'And it's not very well that I'm not daring', she thought again as she felt the sponge under her hand, 'I've just had enough adventures to last me a lifetime.'

Truth to be told, she'd much rather remain in the house, bathing in the simple luxuries regular, _normal_ people seem to take for granted. 'And with good reason', she often told herself.

Her duties as a girlfriend, she knew, probably seemed boring next to the raging feminist and adrenaline-addicted adventurer. 'Adrenaline-addicted adventurer.' She chuckled to herself. 'Only a poet could think such eloquent nonsense', she thought.

'And just as well. Right on the money and on both counts.'

Pinching another dish, she noticed her fingers and the familiar numbness right away. She entertained the image for a while and compared her fingers with rather large raisins. 'Better get gloves on', she told herself. She moved to the drawer and it opened-with some resistance-to a rusty "rrrrr".

'But where's the sense in that', she thought as the latex slipped onto her unprotected hands, 'when the boyfriend hasn't even proposed?'

Her stomach, the ever-present gymnast, started to execute triple flips as her left hand, the second finger from the left, reminded her of the absence of weight. What she wouldn't give for just one kneel and the words, "Will you marry me" from the one she loved the most.

What she wouldn't give.

She sighed and returned to the table, humming along as she always did. Her fingers drummed syllables and rhymes on the counter, her breath blowing foam castles to the cold autumn air outside. The rhymes often flowed out of her like water, currently running unattended from the aluminum spigot.

_The spigot._

"Shit", she cursed as she rushed to the unsupervised sink. Her hands quickly grasped the crab-shaped hats, spinning them counterclockwise. Their water bill was unusually high, but she supposed that's what living next to the ocean gives you.

Wiping her sweaty brow, she quickly set work to clearing the kitchen counter, arranging the vases on the table, and setting the plates away in an orderly fashion.

Always in that order.

'Oh jeez.'

Her cheeks turned a faint pink as she rotated the china so that its darling decoration of bears and bamboo thickets faced south. 'Already thinking wife-y thoughts, are you now, Isadora _Baudelaire_?'

'Shutup, shutup, shutup.' She knew she'd rather not think about such things, in the middle of chores no less, but with no avail. Being a poet, thoughts came the same anyway.

And she knew that half of what she wanted couldn't be all her fault.

It always ended up with him.

For three years now they had been living together. And, for the past two years, Isadora Quagmire passed, feet dragging, through life without any mention of marriage or the possible secrecy of a hidden ring. It should be duly noted, also, that for the past two years mentioned, Isadora Quagmire wished fervently for nothing more than that.

Marriage, in all its infant bundles and tax receipts.

Not that monetary gifts meant anything to her. No, she valued her boyfriend far more than the tidal wave of money could possibly take her. Of course, she wasn't sure if he understood it that way.

Count Olaf had been dead for six years, his whole acting troupe sentenced to eighty years…hell, practically everyone who had been after them in the first place resides currently in cramped cement rooms with bars for curtains and pails for toilets.

She sniggered a bit at that, not at all remorseful at picturing that nasty little Fiona girl and her hook-handed brother peering out from behind tall, locked bars.

But she digressed. The fact remained that Klaus, who at first seemed unwilling to touch her, let alone have sex with her, downright avoided the suggestion of marital life like the plague, and Isadora couldn't, for the life of her, comprehend why. She assured him time and time again that the money, his inheritance, refused to faze her, as she too had riches of her own. She was also fairly positive of his fidelity, admitting-to herself-to spying on him when he spontaneously disappeared, only to find him drinking himself to death at a local bar.

Fairly certain, only because sometimes she'd search and he would be nowhere to be found. However, he always came up with a believable excuse, often reciting to her the places he visited during his absence-places she would always forget to search or passed over in favor of more likely ones. And he had yet to come home with the visual mistakes that most men made whilst committing acts of adultery, like forgetting a wristwatch, bringing an unusual perfume into the bedroom, driving home with discarded jewelry present in the car, or the old-fashioned stained-lipstick-on-collar routine. And Klaus had yet to quench her suspicions. As far as she knew it, her boyfriend was safe and exclusive.

She sighed, burying her head in her hands. Isadora supposed that he could be holding things off ever since his horrible fight with his sister and her resulting disappearance. Sometimes those two seemed too much alike, with their damn disappearing acts and all.

Actually…

She immediately lifted her head. Of course.

Perhaps Klaus _did_ desire to marry her, it's just that…perhaps he somehow regrets the enormous fight with his sister, and well…what's good a wedding without siblings? She rationalized that he probably regretted it ever since, but because of his boyish-albeit frustrating-pride, he refused to act upon his feelings, thus postponing his proposal and the wedding!

Isadora frowned a little, though, remembering his reaction to her initial curiosity about "the fight".

"_So **that's** why Violet never visits us on Christmas and the holidays? Because of some insignificant fight?"_

"_It was **not** insignificant, Isadora. And it wasn't just **one** fight. This fight, actually, has been raging on for years. Anyway, I don't even expect you to understand. You don't know what it's like to have a semblance of normality only to have someone take it away from you-"_

"_You're babbling again."_

"_I'm sorry."_

"_No, you're not. If you were, you would tell me what this fight exactly was about instead of dodging the obvious."_

"_End of conversation, Isadora. It doesn't matter. No one can change fucking anything now. It's over. End of story."_

"_Well." _She remembered standing up and toppling her seat over. _"Well, then that's goddamn **unfortunate**, isn't it?"_

What a disaster that was.

The acrobat in her stomach started up again and she shifted her position, hoping the pain would alleviate fast enough to follow where her train of thought was going.

However, since he did feel quite strongly about it, then perhaps her vein of suspicion ran correct. Perhaps this fight acted as the catalyst to his drinking habits, strange behavior, and what Isadora herself liked to call "Marital Cowardliness".

He called to her again, bless his soul, from the living room, "Isadora, you all right in there? Your drink's ready."

At that same moment, she thought she felt the west wind breeze into the confines of the kitchen. At that same moment, a woman named Beretta Jones was singing her recorded heart out on a two disk cassette, slumming together the sentences, "_Twenty-four hours they gave me/But I told her I wanted the gun/Then she said, 'Might as well make it twenty-one_."

She stared out the window, into the oncoming deep, at the cable wires tangled in some crazy, unexplainable mess. Everything seemed stumps and gnarled fingers, and even she, capable of forgetting the horrible things she'd seen in the past years, could not quench the creeping anxiety bubbling inside her stomach.

She chose, however, to ignore it for the time being.

She stared at the silent trees, the leaves and bark slowly morphing into a single color and thought to herself,

'I'd better give Sunny a ring.'


	3. Seventen

**Disclaimer: Always, darling, not mine. A Series of Unfortunate Events belongs to Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket.**

Author's Note: Nny11, This story is mostly for personal satisfaction. However, it's nice to see that someone else is as sick as me. And I'm really spewing out the chapters, yeah? Again, sorry if this is crap. I don't believe in beta readers. But I love baby piggies.

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Chapter Two:

**Seven-ten**

"September seventeenth?"

The newspaper rustled nosily as it fell to the table.

"September seventeenth?" he repeated.

He threw a wayward glance at her retreating figure, carefully noting the hastily made apron knot and her comparably stiff posture. He noticed how jittery she seemed today, catching her with a different utensil in her hand every time he glanced her way. Before she turned her back on him (for some strange reason, he'd hardly seen anything besides it today), she had been holding a coffee pot in one hand and a spoon in the other. He lifted the mug to his lips, his eyes never leaving the back of her.

From his experience, Thursdays were never worth waking up to.

He'd practically screamed when he woke up in the morning, the sunlight blaring through every nook and cranny of their bedroom. Suspiciously enough, he vaguely remembered shutting the blinds the night prior.

'As if waking up with a massive hangover wasn't bad enough.' To add further insult to injury, his only memory of the previous night consisted of passing out on the living room couch, leaving Isadora in the bedroom by herself. He supposed that sometime during the night he found his own way back to the bed, but by then Isadora was fast asleep.

The memory, however, is far worse. He remembers feeling the elating sense of relief at seeing her sleeping, untouched body, and could not feel any guiltier.

As he pushed the forming, darker thoughts from his mind, he was aware of only one thing.

_Fucking_ Thursdays.

His lips moved atop the rim of the coffee mug.

"Is it a date I'm obligated to remember?" He winced at the bitterness; she forgot the cream again. 'Probably on purpose,' he thought.

"A birthday, perhaps? A funeral to attend to?"

He didn't need to see her face to know what she was doing, because as she rolled her eyes, he smirked, drumming his fingers up and down the checkered boxes in his crossword.

"Klaus, don't even try to be difficult. I swear my migraines are returning, and I certainly do not need you to aggravate me further."

He ignored her, going off on his own tangent. "I suppose today _could_ be your brother's funeral, considering he hasn't yet returned my screwdrivers and completely exhausted my supply of two by fours. In fact, therein lies a great possibility of a funeral-"

"Ha. Ha. Klaus, you are utterly moronic. If you don't remember…" She muttered under her breath, 'since there's a great probability that you were drunk when I did tell you', "I invited Sunny to come and have dinner with us." She cast a quick glance over at him to gauge his response.

To her relief, he was too busy glaring down at his coffee mug to notice any difference in her words. She attempted a stricter tone. "Did you just hear anything I might have said?"

Guiltily, he snapped his head up from the intriguing liquid-"So intense, yet so _horrible_"-and focused his attention again to the back of her head.

"I most certainly did," he lied.

"Then what did I say?"

"Err…something about me finding you terribly attractive and that youlookincrediblysexyinthatdress?"

She resisted the urge to laugh-'Be serious, Isadora'-and retorted, "Nice try, Baudelaire. Any more wise-cracks you want to suspect me to?"

"No ma'am."

"Good. I was just saying that I invited your sister Sunny to come and have dinner with us tonight." She punched in the timer for the oven, adding, "And she might stay over for a couple of nights."

"Oh, that's fine…" _Wait._ He snapped his head up with an incredulous look settling on his face.

"Staying over for a couple of nights?"

She purposely started to season the roast. Her arms looked ghostly pallid in the morning light.

"How on earth did you manage that?"

The silence that followed deafened her ears. The house, previously splattered with sunlight, seemed to be experiencing overcast, all the clouds now hanging heavily in the sky. For a long time the only sound happened to be the ominous tinkling of salt and pepper shakers and even that relied heavily on glass containment.

"Isadora…" She could feel the heat of his eyes boring holes into her back. She shivered, even though no wind passed through the open kitchen window. But like it or not, she knew, she had to go through with this. She swiveled around, the roast temporarily abandoned.

The shot of bourbon also appeared to have helped.

"All right, so I talked to your sister for a while! I convinced her to let Sunny stay for a week or so! I mean, Klaus, we never get to see her that often, and she's growing so fast…I just want to let her know that her family is still there for her!"

She was lying through her teeth, and she knew it. The problem was, did he?

Klaus, on the other hand, was too busy fighting down unwanted memories to hear the subtle wavering tone underlying her voice-which was otherwise admirably stable-and the slight flaring of her nostrils.

"Klaus?" Her voice snapped him back to reality. He stared up at her for a second.

His expression was completely unreadable.

Thankfully, though, the second, being 1/60th of a minute, quickly passed, and his face brightened once again as if nothing had ever happened.

"Excellent!" he exclaimed, rising up in one continuous motion. He walked over to his girlfriend, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her cheek.

"You always think of everything, Izzy", he murmured, lips grazing her ear. She blushed, and he left as quickly as he had entered, muttering something about a broken heater and socket wrenches.

As the footfalls disappeared, so did her feigned courage. She sighed, an increasingly common action, and continued salting the roast, her mind drifting to other things.

Outside, the clouds had not lessened and she couldn't help thinking of them as a foreboding prediction of things to come.

* * *

Upstairs the showerhead sputtered nosily, running the noise down to the living room, where the music player had been set to "low" and all the words drowned out by the ghost of water. Isadora lolled her head back, the couch unmoving to the beat of her quickened heart.

Overhead, the wooden ceiling remained faintly polished, yet remnants of mold had found their way through cracks in the walls, most likely made by stubborn rains and winter weather. Sometimes, when it leaked, Klaus liked to set buckets under the cascading droplets, the sound resounding ten times louder throughout the house because of the metal. During a particular stormy season when resulting buckets were strewn across the floor, Isadora felt that she might go mad.

She imagined the unfathomable action of rain and buckets had something to do with the noise produced, but she couldn't be too sure. The noise practically drove her crazy; she could not really entertain the fact that her boyfriend actually enjoyed it. She wondered if the same noise she found impossible and downright irritating appealed to his sense of relaxation, and amused herself with the thought.

'Why not?', she thought, her mind speaking in Shakespearean tongues, 'We all have strange vices. We all have secrets.'

She couldn't continue with her train of thought for long, though. The water noise increased upstairs and suddenly she felt quite unsafe.

'What will he do when he sees…if they're here…that I lied-' An onslaught of slight nausea quickly silenced the thought.

Consciously, her heartbeat quickened and she moaned to no one in particular, "Waiting is akin to suffering."

While thinking of a word that rhymed with "suffering" however, Isadora thought she heard the faintest knock. Raising her head, her eyes lingered on the wooden door roughly nine feet diagonal from her sitting position. The knock repeated again, and she stood up, quite certain it was not the wind.

She arrived at the door quickly enough, but hesitated a bit as she stood in front of it. She wiped her clammy hands on her dress, shaking her head roughly, chastising her betraying body.

'Why are you shaking? There's nothing to be afraid of. This isn't Count Olaf. This isn't a social worker coming to tell you that your triplet brother is dead. This isn't anything. There's nothing to be afraid of.'

She slowly twisted the knob, watching her reflection in the brass intently, checking for signs of excessive melodrama and expressive decay. The cold breeze greeted her, once again, as she stepped out, barefooted, onto the welcome mat.

The silhouetted trees bristled like bones against the chilled air, and the pathway before her glimmered an ivory white, caused by the illumination of brightened street lamps. So night had finally fallen around the grounds of the inconspicuous residence. She swallowed, an unconscious gesture to shove down her anxiety.

It worked.

She squinted her eyes, but only for a slight second as a familiar shadow came into view.

The light glinted off her blonde strands and bounced, star-like, creating a looping halo. Even in the half-light/dark night, the hair shimmered almost unnaturally. The very sight of her seemed, if just for a minute, to banish all the creatures of the night; her presence a faint glow under the shadows of oak trees.

The girl before her smiled toothily, slight gaps between her teeth apparent, but nonetheless comforting.

"Oh, Sunny!"

Her words spilled out of her lips like the tears she furiously kept at bay, ever threatening to unload. Her arms reached out before she knew it, and embraced the girl where she stood. The top of her head reached Isadora's chin, but she couldn't find herself to let go just yet.

Sunny giggled into her curls. "Missed you too, Izzy," she murmured, her sweet voice muffled.

Only when finally stepping back to marvel how tall Sunny had grown did Isadora see the figures (one crouching to the other) behind Sunny.

The walls of her heart tightened but she forced herself to look.

She peered closer, rubbing her arms where goosebumps now formed. The wind whipped the dress around her thighs and she involuntarily shuddered.

The boy seemed to be tugging on a woman's hand and she, in turn, seemed to be chastising him softly. The words Isadora felt unable to understand or detect (the wind had sole control over her hearing) but still the woman's mouth moved with invisible air. The night loomed, ever wondering, closer as a lamplight flickered slowly, on and off.

And as if she was aware of eyes, the girl-no, _woman_-lifted her face from the height of the boy's and angled her face towards Isadora's.

Isadora Quagmire experienced, for the first time in her life, a curious feeling akin to shoving your own head in a bucket of rainwater and holding it there.

In short, she felt like drowning.

The mothy lamplights silhouetted the woman's lashes, so that spiders appeared to be resting on her sharp cheekbones, nursing a smattering of light freckles. Her jaw was set in a stubborn line of indigence, her large lips challenging, grim. The facial features that really did Isadora in, however, were the woman's eyes, which were so empty and full of sorrow that both smoke and fire reflected, like burning houses, outwards and up.

The familiarity was not at all comforting.

Sometimes she'd see those eyes, late at night, when he thought that everyone, including the cat, was asleep. Those were the same eyes, she knew, _she knew_, that Klaus himself masked, as they both pretended not to think too deep.

And yet here they were, unburied and unhidden and perhaps punishment.

Her face was so disarming, and yet so molested, that Isadora didn't know whether to smile or cry.

At that extended moment of eternity, Sunny decided to tilt her face to Isadora, an action that broke the initial spell. All feeling finally returned to her frozen limbs, from the tip of her nose to the soles of her bare feet.

At the sight of her quizzical look, Isadora Quagmire found her voice again.

_The night, inconceivable._

"Violet."

The familiar ribbon, tied around the child's neck, fluttered in eloquent response.


	4. Impossible

**Disclaimer: All characters and the basic premise of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" belong to Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler. I merely elaborate.**

Author's Note: Awww, lookit the cute _normal_ house! Yeah, the sex parts come later. I was thinking about them while driving on the H-1 West. Almost missed my exit, it was so flippin' sexy.

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Chapter Three:

**Impossible**

She wearily stabbed the bloody parts of the meat with her fork and shifted around the cracked peppers shaped like eyes. Her appetite was clearly diminished, but she allowed herself to feign a bite or two under the watchful eye of their host. One sideways glance, though, cleared her mind of any idea involving discontent. Both her younger sister and the boy gobbled down their respective meals, both too busy to notice anything besides roast and potatoes.

Her only discomfort sat straight across from her, and she needed no sight to know that.

The lights were unusually milky, casting a strange sheen on anything ivory white: the tablecloth, various dishes, Isadora's hands… Anyway, she hadn't even bothered to examine the house, just because she immediately experienced the most adverse reaction, similar to premenstrual cramps and toxic food poisoning. Even the most mundane, irrelevant object stimulated the faint beginnings of dyspepsia, and she certainly did not want to lose what small portions remained of her lunch because of a house plant. What she did notice, however, was the unnaturally high ceiling from which a small droplet of water plopped onto her tousled hair, provoking her to involuntarily look up.

Oak. _Fucking_ oak.

The oak ceiling, sandalwood bookcases, red brick interior lining, cement-based floor…Violet Baudelaire was no simple fool.

"Violet?"

She blinked her eyes, once, twice, before tilting her chin back down. During the meal, she had a gut feeling that she was being watched, but, like true Baudelaire fashion, she pretended she hadn't noticed.

"Yes?"

Isadora was shocked at how sultry and deep Violet's voice sounded, so completely different from the first time they'd met, a delicate time when girls became women but still remained, albeit reluctantly, girls. How polite and mature she seemed now.

And how far they had all grown.

"I was just wondering…err, that is…how _are_ you nowadays? Business doing well and all that jazz?"

Violet smiled softly at such a rude intrusion of her private life.

'Obviously', she thought, the corners of her lips curling instinctively, 'Isadora Quagmire has no effing idea what I do for a living, nor does she care.'

"Fine."

The answer was curt, and Isadora, being a poet, could not help but hear the underlying tone and despise the common, one word answer. However…she found herself noticing that there was something very peculiar about her dinner guest, but the thought was forced from her mind as quickly as it had entered as she felt a sudden tug on the stomach portion of her house dress.

She looked down only to come face to face with the other unknown diner, whom she had forgotten all about whilst conversing (if one could call it that) with Violet.

The boy shyly peeked up from under effeminate, butterfly lashes. He clutched an empty plate to his chest, swaying slightly from side to side as he did so, as if the balls of his feet were really Chinese marbles. He mumbled something under his breath, but his voice was so soft, Isadora missed it. She bent down lower, trying her hand at a kind smile.

"I'm sorry, honey. What was that?"

"Can I please get more, Auntie?"

Isadora broke out into a huge grin, patting the boy on his dark curls. "Of course, honey. You can get as much as you-"

Violet's voice suddenly cut in. "It's 'may I', James. Remember your manners."

Her voice sounded a lot like a sharp kitchen knife slicing through butter.

Isadora immediately began to protest, barely beginning a rant about how he needn't worry, it's fine, it's fine, before she was silenced by the sharp tone of Violet's voice.

"And she's not your Auntie."

The silence lasted only a mere second, but Isadora could feel her innards starting to frost over. Any outsider could have dismissed this comment as mere truth, or at least a haphazard, throwaway attempt at one. To specific Isadora, however, this comment was far from shallow.

Isadora Quagmire was a brilliant girl and an even brighter woman. Poetry, the intricate and delicate art of words, had survived as her forte for a good twenty one years. Most recently and by the fault of her boyfriend's encouragement, she started research on a variety of other subjects, the most intriguing of them psychology. Chapter Fifteen of "Herbert's Hanneman's Hinting Human" explained all about wayward meanings commonly present in actor's voices, how people are generally unaware of the power of stressing speech, and etc.

Because of this prior enlightenment, Isadora's sharp ears picked up the slightly over-stressed vowel in the word, "not" and a lilt at the end of the word, "your".

None of which seemed to comfort her.

"What a handsome boy." She changed the subject, gesturing to the child.

A thought suddenly struck her at the same moment the boy crept up on his tiptoes (since the counter was far too high and he, far too short). Her lips moved without conscious permission. "Is he…"

She replied curtly. "Yes."

"Oh."

An expected silence once again ensued, and Isadora found she had nothing else to say.

They continued picking at their respective meals in silence, the metal clattering of the fork's prongs against china the only audible noise. Each were lost in their own thoughts, varying from "What the hell have I gotten myself into" to "I can't believe she's being such a difficult bitch."

And though the last thought is completely inappropriate for little sisters to think about their older ones, Sunny felt that the current situation deserved it.

As Isadora stood up to refill her glass of water, the blonde girl scooted closer to her sister and hissed, "What is wrong with you?"

Violet's eyes never left her plate and she continued pretending to eat, making haphazard stabs with her fork.

"Nothing," she replied coolly, impaling a defenseless piece of broccoli.

"Vi, this is so unlike you! She's only trying to do her best…don't you remember? You used to be friends with her!" Sunny watched as her sister slowly met her semi-pleading gaze. She couldn't identify many of the emotions swimming in their depths, but there was a specific one she immediately recognized from years of living with Violet.

Violet's eyes went soft across her knowing sister's expression.

"You know what she wants."

Sunny resisted the urge to hug her older sister and instead whispered, "Vi, please don't be like this. What's done is done. You can't keep on wishing-"

"Shhh." Violet lifted a finger to her lips.

Sunny quieted as Isadora returned to the dining table, carrying a bottle of red wine.

"I couldn't very well leave this lying around, could I?" She addressed all of them but kept her eyes on the boy, who at this point, had returned to his seat with second helpings.

Violet, in turn, narrowed her eyes a bit, noticing that her host's absence took a bit long. Isadora quickly covered herself, announcing, "Klaus should be coming about now. Apparently he passed out in our bedroom during the afternoon, and I've just gone to wake him up."

Sunny didn't even need to look to see her sister tensing. She hurried, "Do I get a taste of wine too, Izzy?"

That did the trick.

Violet frowned. "Sunny, you're a little too young to drink, don't you think?"

Sunny stuck her tongue out. "As if. I wasn't asking you."

"Me too! Me too! Can I drink some too?", the boy chimed in, his mouth full of garlic potatoes.

"James, chew with your mouth closed." She let out an exasperated sigh, shooting Isadora her most complimentary look all evening.

'_Kids_', the look clearly said.

Isadora involuntarily chuckled as Violet ran her hand through her hair. "You don't even know what wine is."

"Do too. It's grape juice!"

"Fermented, darling. That means you can't drink it."

"But _Auntie_ _Sunny_ says that's it's yummy and _you_ drink it!"

"Yeah, right. Nice try, mister." She tousled his hair, glaring at Sunny, who, in the meantime, took to filling "Violet's" wineglass. "And _you_ put that down."

Isadora was watching with such great amusement at the strange turn of events that even she did not notice the audible click of a door being forced open from the outside.

When he stepped into the room, all talk abruptly ended.

Completely oblivious to the change, he immediately addressed Isadora and embraced her, a glass bottle present in his left hand. She stood stiffly in his arms.

"Hey, Izzy. Sorry I'm late." He kissed her on the cheek before spotting Sunny. Sunny waved her hand meekly.

"Hey."

"Sunny! God, I haven't seen you in such a long time, how _is_ my baby-"

A strangled choke and Isadora reacted to it by shifting a bit left. Someone was clutching a wineglass while engaging in a coincidental coughing fit.

Klaus Baudelaire, self-proclaimed intellectual and dutiful normal boyfriend, made the unfortunate mistake of glancing up.

And, as quick as the last couple of years had been, time flashed backwards again.

He could feel his whole house crumbling to ash like the previous home before it, and the one before that. Klaus Baudelaire never thought he'd see his homes again, and now, by some form of wicked luck, was staring straight into familiar windows.

It was as if nothing else existed, that every one of the lamplights extinguished, and they were, by way of memory, eleven years back in the dusty confines of Count Olaf's literal darkness.

They were all orphans again, every single one of them. _So_ unlucky.

His breath hitched in his throat as his mind feebly began to process everything. His mouth moved by no command of his brain.

The past four years, his semblance of normality, a feigned affection, the carefully constructed life…

He forgot.

He was never the great inventor.

His

"Sister."

Was.


	5. Ghosts

**Disclaimer: Dudes belong to Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler. Dudes don't belong to me.**

Author's Note: Yep, Nny11. Ran a red light because of them sex fantasies. Tell me, when you write a fic, do you talk to yourself like Virginia Woolf in "The Hours"? Because it's either it's just me or both of us are completely crazy. Mwrah. Dedicated to the only two dudes reading this story. Stella and Nny11. Meef.

* * *

Chapter Four:

**Ghosts**

"Sister."

The thought alone was too incredulous to be true.

Sadly and ironically though, Klaus Baudelaire never had much luck with thoughts. He'd learned slowly and early, from unfortunate experience, the maddeningly great difference between thoughts and reality.

Reality, simply, could not be standing in the middle of your unchanged kitchen after finally coming to terms about marriage (that it was unavoidable, but drinking cured all) while greeting your sweet little sister (who you haven't seen for the longest time) before coming face to face with the person whom you, with the charred remains of your heart, wretchedly still despised (or so you told yourself). The same person who wrapped you around her familiar fingers, promising you the world while arching her back on that creaky bed, who made you love her because you had no choice, and threw you away because she didn't need you anymore.

And only one person in the whole wide world, he knew, could ignite such sweet sorrow and memories back into his brain and heart, defeating everything he had worked for in the past couple of years into nothing but cold, black, ash.

"Violet…"

She outwardly winced at the way he whispered her name. It was the same voice she heard five and a half years ago, when nothing could be done about anything and she ran, her ribbon fluttering like bats behind her, out the makeshift wooden door, into the pouring rain and beyond.

It was the song of her little brother's heart breaking.

Again.

"Violet…," he repeated, as if convincing himself that yes, she was here, sitting right there, in this house.

She, however, could not find herself to look up at him, keeping her eyes lowered to her lap, twisting her hands together above the netted lace.

'This can't be happening.' She blinked back tears, trying to keep her sorrow at bay. The memories kept surfing over and over into the fragile, but still withholding, walls of her heart.

'Stop it. Please stop it. Why did I ever come?' Those sentences ran amuck in her mind's maze, crashing into corners, sometimes leading nowhere.

And Klaus, he tried, fruitlessly, to tear his eyes away.

But she looked so beautiful.

It tore him right apart and he was fourteen again or fifteen and she was staring up at him with those strange same gorgeous eyes and told him 'I love you' and then…and then he couldn't STAND IT ANYMORE.

"Why?" he practically screamed at her, furious and flailing uncontrollably.

Isadora had backed up into a wall, her shocked face betraying all of her emotions, and could only watch as her husband's docile mask shattered into twenty different pieces, all reflecting Violet Baudelaire's enchanting face. She couldn't move, or refused to, and watched as the ironic nature of her poetry slowly came to life and unfolded.

He, or rather his blind rage, blocked out all the images around him: Sunny yelling, threatening bodily harm if he dare approached their sister, Isadora stifling sobs into her hands, the leaking wooden roof…

Only when he heard the faintest sound penetrating the very depths of his rage did he stop.

And soon everything else came into view.

"You stay the hell away from her, Klaus Baudelaire! She's our _goddamn_ sister and you know that!"

"I am so sorry, I didn't know, I didn't know," Isadora chanted into her palms, eyes bloodshot and swollen from crying.

Violet just sat there, watching her knuckles slowly turning ivory

"Are you even listening to me, Klaus? Take one more step towards her and I'll-" Sunny stopped short, confused as her brother calmed down, dropping his arms to his sides. Her fringe was in the way of her sight, so she had to blow the thin strands out of her face before seeing what really stopped him, since she was smart enough to know that her brother would never really listen to her, regardless of empty threats.

He was strange and scary that way.

She followed his gaze across the tiled floor to the legs of an abandoned stool, where her brother's sight ended.

There, curled up tightly in the right corner of the kitchen counter, lay James, whimpering vowels from his frightened mouth. She saw her brother shift uncomfortably in the rectangular box of her peripheral vision, clearly embarrassed at the way he shouted while in the company of a small child.

It was as if he had forgotten everything; his rage, whatever anger still coursed through his veins…Sunny knew her brother was not a bad person and she knew that. If he could still feel remorse for his actions because of a mere child, he could never be that evil.

But what then, what could cause him to turn into such a monster? She frowned and scanned the room. Her gaze landed on the only thing probable.

And her sister still stared down at her hands.

"Oh," she heard herself say, but for some reason, she already thought she knew.

Tears dribbled down the boy's rounded cheeks like icicles in late March. Now aware of eyes, though, he proudly swiped at them with his thumb and forefinger, trying very hard, as children do, to be very brave.

Klaus, out of all people, knew and understood what it was like to be so small, yet so strong.

The child, he thought, reminded him a little bit of himself.

He warily approached the child, noticing that with every step the child flinched or closed his eyes just a tiny bit more. When he finally did reach him, he crouched down so that his face was level with the child's. He smiled softly, the ghost of a smile lingering on his saddened eyes.

"Hey, Buddy," he prodded, soothingly. "Hey. I'm sorry for yelling."

The boy stared back at him, reluctant, almost, to believe it. However, children, being the forgiving creatures they are, feel quick to forgive, most especially the increasing number of sad people, a forgivable percentage considering that all the babies born in the world many years prior are suddenly growing up. The boy, James, sniffled his last and nodded, dark curls springing forward.

"It's ok," he whispered, and Klaus Baudelaire, for the first time in the last three and a half years, felt like flying. Although being granted forgiveness had a lot to do with it, Klaus had taken one look at the boy and understood.

"It's ok," he repeated the boy's words, but ever so quietly, so that only the boy heard it. "I'll take care of you."

The boy's face broke into a handsome grin, and all tears were forgotten. "Nrgh," he mumbled into his sleeve, and everyone present in the room with the exception of Isadora, understood what that meant. Sunny herself even tried a hand at her namesake and cracked a tiny grin, much to the relief of the panicked Isadora.

Sighing gratefully, Isadora leaned back into the wall, believing that the worst was over and that yes, she was quite the genius.

Isadora Quagmire, as usual, was mistaken.

As Klaus leaned over to tousle the boy on his hair, Violet spoke. It was as if she had eyes in the back of her head, or some sort of sixth sense that enabled her to foresee the action. Either way, she spoke just as his hand hovered over the boy's dark curls, still suspended in the air.

She was still staring at her knuckles, wringing her whitening hands like ribbons.

"Don't you dare touch him," she whispered, enunciating the words clearly and coldly. The words exited her mouth as the smoky substance of a threat.

"Don't. You. **Dare**."

Sunny stared, mouth agape at the grim audacity of her older sister. 'Was she _trying_ to provoke him?'

Isadora, now a bystander, closed her eyes as a familiar spider crawled up the ladder of her spine. She too was having the most unforgivable flashbacks of the past, just because of this horrid interaction of brother and sisters. She clutched her own stomach, wrestling with her own demons. 'Stop it. Stop it. Forget. Forget.' Usually the mantra worked and Isadora usually felt herself transform back into a normal, breathing person, but this time, she surmised, no one could do anything anymore.

The can of worms had been opened, and Isadora herself was to blame.

Klaus spun around on his crouched heel, dropping his hand to his side. His rage temporarily quenched, all Sunny could see was the most unreadable, contemptuous, smug look contorting his features. Sunny felt her heart drop to her stomach.

Her brother's expressions rivaled that man's…Count Olaf.

He slowly got up and walked to his older sister, who's hair, in the meantime, draped over her face like a veil of black rain. When he reached her, he didn't even bother to swivel her around to face him. He just stood there, in back of her, without moving. Once he even tried to reach out to touch her, but it seemed he thought better of it.

Because of it, his hand now stood a few centimeters from her face, close enough to radiate human warmth. Sunny saw that his face was more contorted now, a confused look following the smug one, then a sadness, then a sneer, then…

She never found out what happened after that. Violet suddenly shoved her chair back into a stunned Klaus, pushed against his chest with her elbow, then ran from the confines of the uncomfortable room.

"Violet," Sunny yelled, to no avail, after her fleeing sister.

Klaus could only watch as her hair floated behind her, like a stream of black bats, into the hallway then out the back door, into the forest that was the backyard.

They all stood (the boy sat) there, mesmerized as if watching a train wreck (which indeed could have passed off as one) until the wail that unmistakably came from James erupted from beyond his tiny throat.

"Mommy!" he cried, the tears again trickling down his face. "Mommy!"

Sunny turned and watched as a dark look passed over Klaus' face. He immediately grabbed the glass bottle from the table and took a hearty swig of whatever was inside, a dribble of orange liquid escaping the corner of his mouth.

James still hollered after Violet.

"Please, Mommy! Don't go!"

Klaus, leaning against the wall, his eyes unreadable, took another swig of his alcohol. He fixated his eyes on the empty hallway.

"She always does, kid. She always does."


	6. Backwards

Disclaimer: All the characters and some of the memories belong to a Mr. Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket. They do not belong to me.

Author's Note (Written in techni-ANGER!): I am so pissed off. A federal appeals court ruled against Kamehameha schools. Those bastards. Half my family is part native Hawaiian and now my own nephew will have increased competition to get into one of the best schools in the nation. Those fucking bastards.

On a lighter note, oh my yes, Nny11. A sad burrito indeed. And hell, your reviews are the shiznit. They are quite comforting in a dwindling fandom. Meef. I was also sorely tempted to use the Family Guy line in this piece: "Well…it's time for me to hit the old dusty trail…" But then I realized it made me no better than anyone else.

* * *

**Chapter Five:**

**Backwards **

_Drinking for eleven/that's just what I do/When I'm not with you/My heart goes to bed_

_End of the bar/that's just where I'll be/Don't try and come find me_

'_Cause I'm already dead_

_-"Drinking for Eleven"_

Her legs were burning.

The tears streamed down her face and she tried her hardest not to make the normal choking sounds that usually came with exposing your empowering, hidden sadness. The mantra that repeated insistedly, and in the voice of a very young girl, kept on whispering to her, "Not in front of them. Be strong. Be strong."

Be strong.

Oh, how she desperately wanted to. Instead, here she was, running again.

She paused her plight into the yard, her legs collapsing, ivory, under the uncovered moonlight. Her hands caught her fall but just barely, a naked knee slamming into the wet ground with force. Mud and uprooted weeds splattered like watercolor paints around an alabaster angel as she fell forward into her palms. She slipped on the bare soles of her feet, before just giving up and settling down in the pungent wetness. Her dress bloomed outwards in the mud, and, should anyone be watching, they would liken her to an angel that had just lost her wings.

"Invent something, you stupid girl," she hissed to herself. "Invent _anything_."

Unfortunately, she couldn't.

She had left her ribbon with her son.

And there was no raw materials, no anything to even suggest an invention to quell her thoughts or diminish the feelings that she thought that she had gotten rid of so long ago.

Nothing.

Violet clutched her stomach and rocked back and forth, something she hadn't done in a long time. It was an attempt to shallow all the forbidden thoughts and deep desires that engraved themselves, long ago, into her brain. It was either that she didn't clutch hard enough or rock fast enough because the memories came, they came just the same.

"_None of us knows how to cook," Klaus said._

"_That's true," Violet said. "I knew how to repair those windows, and how to clean the chimney, because those sorts of things interest me. But I don't know how to cook anything except toast."_

"_And sometimes you burn the toast," Klaus said, and they smiled._

She gasped as her mind transformed to the foggy outline of bleak days and unhappy events. There they all stood (Sunny just barely) like lighthouse beams of relief slicing through a nighttime sea.

"_Violet, we don't know where we are, do we?"_

_She searched his face to almost no avail. He remained stoic, all the features in his face appearing to freeze like the incomprehensible apathy the world routinely showed them._

_She bit her lip, fighting back her flighty fingers that twitched in ribbon. "No, Klaus. We do not."_

_He was quiet for a minute, just like the world for once._

"_Violet?"_

_She stopped fussing with the ribbon just enough to peer at her younger brother. Olaf could be anywhere in the distance; they didn't have much time before they had to move again._

"_Yes, Klaus?"_

_He mumbled something incoherent, his cheeks turning faintly pink. She smiled; she knew it wasn't the wind._

"_What?" she prodded, soothing like a big sister should be._

"_I said 'I thank you'."_

_She squeezed his hand, knowing he had trouble doing so since he was given the burden of carrying Sunny. Even the saccharine sunset before them couldn't rival their glow: the glow that one exudes simply by surviving, the glow that one exhales simply by loving, and the glow that one relives over and over again, simply just by being._

_Violet, the inventor, did not need to build a warmth sensor or love gauge just to feel the glow._

_She peeked a glance at her brother, the sugary rays bouncing off his glass lenses and kept smiling._

_He had said, 'I love you'._

Violet's large, once curious, eyes brimmed with hot liquid. Her vision blurred, and before she knew it, she was crying. All twenty-five years of unshed tears.

'Be strong,' the little girl whispered again. 'Be strong.'

* * *

Inside, the lamps flickered on and off, the howling wind outside somehow twisting the electric wires. Sunny had finally pacified the child, who stopped his wailing just as she shouted, "Wok!" in frustration, a single word that meant something like, "She's coming back, you bratty kid. She just needs to be alone. Go bother your Uncle Klaus."

Speaking of Uncle Klaus…she glared at her older brother, sipping slowly from his wineglass. Well, technically it was Violet's wineglass, but it appeared that no one really cared. He kept on glancing over at the boy, like drinking in front of him might scar him for life but needing the alcohol anyway.

"Nargh," she mumbled, throwing her blonde head in her hands. Her siblings could be so _difficult_.

Klaus, on the other hand, watched the boy play around with the various chinaware and silverware, building a makeshift bird out of paper napkins. He didn't even notice as Isadora disappeared, rubbing her temples and saying something about making a call to her brother. The paper successfully piled up without falling and the young boy grinned proudly to himself. It didn't even vaguely resemble a bird, but Klaus couldn't help but smile at that.

His shoulders slumped in unconscious relaxation, all while keeping his eyes on the boy.

He was so much like his mother.

_The Viper was brilliant, too, and as the children looked at one another, they saw their own tears and the way they shone._

"_You're brilliant," Violet murmured to Klaus, "reading up on the Mamba du Mal."_

"_You're brilliant," Klaus murmured back, "getting the evidence out of Stephano's suitcase."_

"_Brilliant!" Sunny said again, and Violet and Klaus gave their baby sister a hug._

"Bwrah!" James exclaimed, snapping Klaus from his unwanted daydream. "I did it, Uncle Klaus!" The boy looked up expectantly at him, startling Klaus a bit, who was wondering at the moment, how and when exactly had the boy come up so close without him noticing. Feigning eagerness, Klaus took one look at the said "bird".

It looked nothing like one, and Klaus had read about millions of birds.

"How…" The top "wing" flopped over like a withered erection. "Improbable."

James grinned, his amazingly white teeth shining.

"That means '_Super_', right, Uncle Klaus?"

Klaus threw the boy a smile, vowing to buy the boy some books to read one day. "Sure, James. Sure."

He ruffled the boy's hair. He was suddenly aware, however, of eyes and glanced to his side. Sure enough, Sunny and Isadora, who was now back in the kitchen, had been watching them intently. There was something unreadable in his girlfriend's eyes, but Sunny seemed to be smirking.

Uncomfortable, he shifted in his chair and drew his hand back. At the sight of James' disappointed face, however, Klaus said, "Hey, Buddy, can you do your Uncle a favor?"

His face instantly brightened. "Sure," he chirped.

"Do you know how to make a 'James' Drink'?" The boy shook his head.

"What's a 'James' Drink'?"

"Why, it's a drink named after you, of course. Let's see…two shots of dark rum," he paused, quickly scanning his vast brain for liquor information, "One shot of spiced rum…" He allowed himself to smile at Sunny's shocked reaction. "One shot bourbon and one shot scotch whiskey." He gestured to Isadora who was still standing at the door with a strange expression on her face. "Izzy will show you how. You can pour it yourself, though."

James quickly ran to Isadora, tugging on her sleeve. She turned in the direction of the liquor cabinet (living room, far east) but not before shooting a knowing look at Klaus, which was so incomprehensible that it even left him confused.

He didn't dwell on it, though. He never usually did.

_Violet knelt at Klaus's side, giving him a hug to try to make him feel better. Sunny crawled over to his glasses, picked them up, and brought them over to him. _

_Klaus began to sob, not so much from the pain but from the rage at the terrible situation they were in. _

_Violet and Sunny cried with him, and they continued weeping as they washed the dishes, and as they blew out the candles in the dining room, and as they changed out of their clothes and lay down to go to sleep, Klaus in the bed, Violet on the floor, Sunny on her little cushion of curtains. _

_The moonlight shone through the window, and if anyone had looked into the Baudelaire orphans' bedroom, they would have seen three children crying quietly all night long._

"Wow. That sure was fast."

James grinned at the compliment, his tiny hands clutching the glass with outstretched arms. "I'm improbably fast," he elaborated.

Klaus smiled as he took the cup from James' hands.

"What else can you make?" he implored, his eyes twinkling mischievously.

The boy straightened up as Isadora came up behind him and put her hands on his shoulders. Klaus ignored the look she was still shooting him, and tilted his head to the boy's.

James only proudly smiled back.

"Toast."

"_None of us knows how to cook," Klaus said._

"_That's true," Violet said. "I knew how to repair those windows, and how to clean the chimney, because those sorts of things interest me. But I don't know how to cook anything except toast."_

"_And sometimes you burn the toast," Klaus said, and they smiled._

"Klaus!" He snapped the focus off his drink. "Klaus!"

Sunny studied him carefully, her blonde hair ethereal under the kitchen lights. "Are you all right?"

He gave a half-hearted smile. "I'm just exhausted from all this excitement." Sunny immediately jumped at the chance.

"Well then. I think that means that James," she gestured to the little boy, "and Izzy and I should probably be getting ready for bed soon." She softly smiled at Isadora, and Isadora couldn't deciper the shadows in her usually bright eyes. "Don't you find?"

Isadora complied, now averting her gaze so that it only faced the stairs. As they all started to ascend the stairs, however, Sunny said the strangest thing.

"Nobody's perfect," to no one in particular and they disappeared into darkness upstairs.

Klaus just sat there for a while, dumbfounded, to say the least.

But after "a while", he found himself walking to his back door.

"_And sometimes you burn the toast," Klaus said, and they smiled._

_Klaus said, and they smiled._

they smiled.


	7. Improbable

**Disclaimer: All characters, again, are not my property. They are the sole property of Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket.**

Author's Note: The reason why I haven't been shitting out chapters as fast is because I find it hard to write within the notes I have provided myself with. School starts, evidently, in a day, and I hope to really finish this story before I get all lazy again. The sole of my right foot has a fin gash from the other day, when someone's fins popped up and sliced my foot while I was pumping a wave. Surf was shitty that day, and stupid me, I had to stay out for another two hours. It was still bleeding as I limped to my truck.

To Nny11: Yes, he is quite the drunk. Writers and avid readers tend to be. Ha ha. I'm sure you know.

* * *

**Chapter Six:**

**Improbable**

"_For the first time Desdemona tasted the flavor of his mouth, and the only sisterly thing she did during their lovemaking was to come up for air, once, to say, 'Bad boy. You've done this before.' But Lefty only kept repeating, 'Not like this, not like this…'"_

"_Lefty couldn't pinpoint the moment he'd begun to have thoughts about his sister."_

_-"Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides"_

So that's where he found her, albeit reluctantly, outside, dying her lips purple with the stains of red wine still present from dinner.

Stars scattered gaily overhead, basking merrily under the watchful orbits of comets. The meager light given off by the few lamplights flickered as if ashamed of the magnificent night above. A light wind caressed the tendrils of hair not already clasped by her fingers.

It had rained earlier, but neither one could pinpoint exactly when.

Perhaps it had been the time between Klaus staring with disbelief and desire at his lovely sister and her refusal to meet his gaze. But that didn't help anything at all: it described all thirty two minutes and sixteen seconds, or however long it took for the estranged siblings to sniff each other out and recognize that same blood that could never, ever, be broken.

Not even all the inventions or books in the world can really do or say otherwise.

The ribbon was not up in her hair, strangely, and he wondered what intricate turns tonight could take. His own bare feet splashed and slipped in the wet mud, but he amazingly regained balance to reach her. Considering how much he had drank, this feat seemed quite admirable.

Yet he almost lost his balance when he finally did reach her. Her half-lidded eyes, still determined and strong, shoved him with such incredible force that it took all his might to plunge through the higher power and approach her.

"May I sit?" He felt like a little boy again, stolen from his house and taken to live with the villainous Count Olaf. Her eyes were dried, but her "little" brother wasn't fooled.

"Go ahead," she said.

And they sat together, side by side, just silently staring at anything else but themselves. Violet picked aimlessly at the grass, forcing her mind on other things, like building a new grass-cutter or finishing her latest invention, a talking toy dragon for James that could dance and clean up his room simultaneously. Since she was sober, she had better luck at keeping her head straight and mouth shut.

Klaus, on the other hand, was not so lucky.

"Did you have a good dinner?" His voice had a slight sarcastic tone to it. Violet could not help but stop picking at the grass, her insides starting to boil and bubble. She still refused to look at him though, being the level-headed one in the family.

She merely nodded.

"I don't care much for roast," he trudged on, now babbling coherently. "It's nothing compared to-"

"Strawberries," she murmured.

"_She said, 'When you think of me, think of a food you love very much.'"_

"_Well, why don't you?" Her voice wavered without her permission._

"_Because when I eat strawberries, I always think of you."_

_And she blushed when he smiled because they remembered the time when Violet got caught in a thorn patch in an effort to reach the strawberries she knew her brother desperately wanted. It was his birthday and she came home scratched and bleeding but sporting a proud grin and two buckets of gleaming red strawberries._

_And Klaus' eighth birthday was by far the best birthday he had ever had._

_Until his ninth, of course, when Violet came home with three buckets._

"Ah, you remembered," he said, raising up an eyebrow in suggestion. She pointedly turned her head away. Her bare shoulder protruded from the mirage of lace and buttons intricately lining her dress. Klaus suddenly found he had an increasingly harder time looking away.

"I don't make it a point to," she replied flatly. "You are my brother, after all. It's simply a practical application of knowledge."

"Ever the inventor."

"Ever the scholar."

The mud was now lapping up to his trousers, a chilly moistness creeping up his leg. She felt it too, you know, the wetness.

They stopped trying to litter the air with superfluous conversation, though, for a minute or two. It was one of those silences when one could actually feel the other groping for nameless words in an attempt to recreate the next batch of sentences into something much more meaningful.

Questions, more often than not, are commonly used to fill the inevitable space. And scholarly Klaus Baudelaire could have read every single book in the world, and still not know the answers to some lingering questions such as,

"And James?"

Startled but trying hard not to show it, Violet angled her chin to a place where the moonlight couldn't reach her eyes. That action was enough to convince Klaus Baudelaire of the painful truth. It was as if an anchor slammed into the fragile beams of his stomach, and he felt himself swaying forward.

"Oh," he simply said, disgust clearly evident in his voice. He felt the bile rise, like an elevator shaft, up and down his throat, tasting of acid and alcohol. There were images he thought he'd never recall, ever again, but still they swarmed like bees, or Lacrhymose leeches, around the repressed memory of his childhood.

Images concerning a horrid fiend accosting the teenage version of his older sister, her unblemished legs thrashing in the dusty confines of a tower, screaming for her brother that apparently, arrived too late. It was the night of Violet's eighteenth birthday, when Count Olaf thought he had won, until he saw the boy's finger on the trigger, the tarnished metal reflecting the hate in his eyes, and the simple solace of sound.

Brother and sister embraced then, and promised to live happily ever after.

That's when, two weeks later, Klaus Baudelaire stumbled upon discarded clothes and the phrase, "No such thing."

Alcohol is a funny thing. Apparently, when ingested into the bloodstream, it does more than just swirl around, unnoticed, introducing themselves to the red blood cells. _Truth serum_ is a more aptly named title, along with _dissolution_, a familiar little noun that nicely sums up the state of emotions, hidden or not, when paired with the equation of alcohol.

Heaven knows that Olaf drank enough of it, quite enough to kidnap unfortunate orphans again and again, without considering the circumstances or what imminent unpleasantness awaited him in whatever conscience he might have, should someone catch him at it.

Alcohol, Violet mused, simply meant exemplifying stupidity or causing it.

"So he's either a Count or a fucking Quagmire," Klaus sneered, slurring the words together. The first one, apparently, couldn't be helped, but the second one set his organs on fire.

"Don't swear, Klaus."

"Oh, don't remember?" he mimicked a saccharine sweet voice. "I thought you remembered _everything_."

"Klaus, don't-"

"What? Be like this? Violet, dear, did you ever think that the reason I'm like this is all because of you?" His voice dropped dangerously, and she flinched as his cold fingers fluttered on the expanse of her bare shoulder. Her breathing quickened, and she felt her pulse jump up at his single touch. They were bathed in darkness and moonlight and mud, all good friends of the eldest Baudelaires, always pointedly looking away or figuratively positioning a finger to invisible lips, always saying something like, "We won't tell" when they come across a far from sibling love.

"Look at us, trying to be normal," he sneered, the alcohol (or was it?) blurring his vision.

It had been far too long, and he was far too gone.

His thin lips traced the shell outline of her concave ear. "Look at me," he ordered. His breath reeked of alcohol. That's precisely when she realized that he was sitting far too close to her.

She shook her head. "No. Klaus, stop." She stiffened and pulled away from him, drawing her dress over her bare shoulder.

"Look at me, goddamnit!" She couldn't.

He was tearing her apart.

"Look at me!"

He grabbed her shoulders, exposing them bare again, and yanked her body toward him, so that she was forced to meet his eyes.

They were the same color and shape as her own.

"You tell me, _you tell me_ that I don't matter!" This strange man, filled to the brim with the scent of alcohol and forced happiness, suddenly changed and transformed his shape back into the form of her little brother, a little bit older than sixteen, helplessly watching as the love of his child life writhed under the sweat and bones of someone else.

"Tell me that I don't matter and that you love everyone else but _me_!" She closed her eyes, her nostrils flaring as she tried in vain to keep from crying, right then, at that moment, and from smelling the alcohol that infested her brother, and herself for causing it. Klaus, don't you understand, why can't you understand,

"I _have_ to be the older sister!"

The words tumbled blindly out of her mouth and her eyes widened, as she realized slowly what she had never meant to say out loud. It was as if time itself had quivered and stopped its ejaculation into life.

She had to be the older sister. She had to carry the burden of responsibility. She had to endure, if only, for them, her siblings. She had to stay strong. Even if it meant running away from her heart.

She turned to Klaus, expecting him to understand, as a brother should. She finally gathered the courage to look at him.

"You don't ma-"

And Klaus Baudelaire bent down and kissed his older sister on the lips.

Very hard.

He rolled on top of her, shoving her down in the mud, which splattered with every shift of his body. He groaned as she bit fiercely on his bottom lip, her lower teeth gleaming in the darkness. He returned the favor, nipping her large lower lip, until she gasped in pain or surprise. The dress was practically caked with drying mud, although, in a dress so black and a night so dark, nothing was readily noticeable.

He knew her body so well, so well, that even as she tried in vain to keep silent, something would happen that caused her to arch up more into him. Their legs were tangled together, like the gnarled roots of a family tree, and she found the same skin of her hand descending down her body, fluttering on the glistening silver hooks of a corset.

She felt her body slip every time her brother bit her, and his desperate eyes burned, like the grass secretions, into her heated skin.

And only when she heard the water heater turn on did she shove her brother off of her body and gear her hand back, like the interior of many discarded inventions, and slap her brother clear across the face.

For some reason, in this strange darkness, she witnessed the change of color, slightly forming, on his left cheek. His face just stayed there, at that position, as if suspended in time. Her hand stung with the force of the slap, but all she could feel was the heat radiating from her brother's profile.

_He **struck** my brother! Look at him!_

Her shaky hands floated up to her own face as she opened her mouth in horror and shame.

With that movement, Klaus, without turning his head, reached out and grabbed her delicate wrists. When he did finally turn his head, she felt her heart pummel sixty feet down. His eyes were devoid, glassy things that showed no sign of normal emergence, even when confronted by the sight of houses burning and sisters running. That familiar numbness.

His fingers tightened their grip, and she cried out in pain.

Thankfully, but perhaps not, the screen door connecting the outside to the inside slid open, emitting that common noise that one usually hears, of rust and force. He let her wrists go, as if the slender joints were not wrists at all, but scalding irons, and she, freed, stumbled backward with her hands.

Isadora stepped out, clad in lavender evening lingerie, peering through the darkness and finally asking something like, "Are you coming in? It's quite late out" and, "Do get some rest, please. Fighting can wait until later."

But even her voice cracked and even her sleepy eyes widened when a blur of lace and mud ran past her, leaving a sticky trail of dirt footprints on the tiled floor. The crying, though, she would not hear until later.

Slowly but surely, her boyfriend entered her sight, a slow moving silhouette in the distance. His hair had traces of dirt and twigs embedded in the tendrils, a bruise was forming under his left cheekbone, and his glasses were splattered with mud.

"Oh my god," she lifted a finger to his bruised, purple bottom lip. "What happened?"

He flinched at the gentle touch and her concerned, heart-breaking, unreadable expression.

"Nothing," he murmured, pulling her closer to him reassuringly. "Nothing."

Hours later, and deeper into the night, Sunny and James lay frightfully awake. Her sister and his mother thrashed, the covers billowing off her body like abandoned ghosts. Their ears twitched with the sounds of nightmares and semi-intelligible phrases, her bruised lips muttering things like "I'm sorry" and "You do matter, you do". James huddled closer to his mother, hoping to dispel her dismal dreams and whatever fright or secret bothered her, bothered his beautiful mother, for a total of five years.

One story down and two rooms, including a bathroom, to the left, Isadora Quagmire jotted down notes in some inconspicuous black notebook under a flashlight, glanced over her fitfully turning boyfriend, and wondered if she had heard all the right words.


	8. Unreliable

**Disclaimer: Everyone knows that A Series of Unfortunate Events doesn't belong to me. Listen to everyone.**

Author's Note: The time jumps are a bit weird, but hey. That's how it goes. Now this chapter is also a bit of an "R", but don't tell me no one does these things. From personal effing experience, I think I know female anatomy and what we girls/women do with it. Oh, and "Call Me Irresponsible" is wondrous if Dinah Washington sings it.

Nny11: Seriously. Can you fuck a poet? Haha. Sorry. I shouldn't talk. Anyway, oh lord, the whole drunkenness issue. I swear it's going to be relevant soon, I promise. I'm not much of an "imitate Lemony Snicket" writer myself, so I do try to elaborate on the characters and their situation. But I seriously do not think I can write creative "Oh my, that devious Count Olaf, look what he's gone and done now" chunks. So for obvious reasons, he's dead.

Goth Flamango: Oh my, thank you. You are a wonderful reviewer, if I do say so myself. I will try to shit the chapters out as fast as I can, and I promise to try not to bore of this story and stop updating completely. That would be quite asinine of me. But then again, that's who I am.

* * *

**Chapter Seven:**

**Unreliable**

"_Call me unpredictable-Tell me I'm impractical  
Rainbows-I'm inclined to pursue  
Call me irresponsible-Yes I'm unreliable  
But it's undeniably true-I'm irresponsibly_

_Mad About You"_

_-"Call Me Irresponsible"_

**One day slowly eased into three, three days passed into weeks, and weeks changed into two and a half months. Autumn leaves, golden and gleaming, drizzled down until the quiet frost saturated the once September weekends. The transformation was decidedly sluggish, but not quite deliberate.**

**There were some instances, for example. **

**But nothing too important.**

Sunny frowned, the corners of her mouth pulled down by the same unknown weight her brother carried in the wake of the recent turn of unfortunate events. He now almost always had a shot glass in one hand and a bottle in the other, his eyes glazed over in deep thought. Sunny involuntarily shuddered at his familiar blank stare, a stare that she had witnessed ever since she had been but a small child.

It was wonderful how the mind worked, she thought, quite pleased and amazed that a memory so far in the past could just jolt back into her head in the present, as if there had been no space between that time and that at all.

Of course, the downside included sudden nightmares, of being sucked into gaping holes where a cackling old man waited. Another included an array of spiders secretly crawling into her bed and sometimes she lay awake at night, still feeling the sensations of a million tiny feet. Whatever the nightmare, though, it could never compare to her older sister's dreams of hell.

Such lay the devolution in memory.

She remembered her sister's bruised lips that one autumn evening and endured through frosty silence after frosty silence. She sat through the tension-filled dinners and ignored her peripheral vision and feigned sleep even though all she could do was lay awake and listen to all the arguments between the triplet and her brother and then, after all that, reassured James with a convincing face.

And Sunny Baudelaire was even less a fool than the rest of them.

Whenever she watched, a skill that she had long ago perfected as a baby, she understood more and more. Whatever she watched, she disbelieved less and less.

Something was bothering her brother. Any fool could see that. Something was bothering Isadora. Any fool could see that. Something was bothering her sister. Any fool could see that.

And, since she was about three or four, she knew that her sister and her brother were both "bothering", a word completely taken out of regular context.

That she knew for a fact.

Not that it particularly bothered her. Anyway, their childhood had been anything but normal.

And Sunny Baudelaire was a very clever and strange girl.

So all she could do was sigh and stare out the window and try to ignore it when Isadora entered the "living" room, her fringe in disarray and angry eyes fuming.

Klaus glanced up, nonchalantly, at the change of movement, but quickly dropped his drunken gaze to the floor once he had seen her contorted face.

She waved a stack of papers in her hand, shaking them profusely in front of his face. The new breeze drifted across the room's empty space, and Sunny realized that they must be letters, considering the blur of sentences and typewriter ink. The letters themselves were cream-colored, and as she continued angrily shaking them, they seemed to imitate the oriental fan that she had seen in a history book that Klaus had shown her, many years ago.

She recalled only the information that some fans were used for concealed weapons, the only use besides adornment, which she thought, was never useful in any situation at all.

"You've been reading my letters," she accused, thrusting the papers in his face. "You've been reading my letters, Klaus!"

He pointedly looked away, which seemed to aggravate her even more. Either way, she started to cry.

"Klaus, how could you?" Sunny watched as her brother tilted the glass to his lips.

"How _could_ you?"

He glanced once at Isadora, but Sunny quickly evaluated his look as one of feigned apathy, the emptiness that a child used when in the presence of a murderer to convince him of ignorance. There was something else also…something behind those glasses that Sunny only recognized as the fleeting looks her brother now shot her sister, and perhaps always had.

"I won't kill him, if that's what you mean," he drawled finally, examining the bottle in his hand. His wrist flicked up and allowed the glimmer to settle throughout his skin. Glassy light reflected everywhere. A star spangled burst drifted on Isadora's forehead, a lone star among pale seas.

"Or I'll try not to."

Sunny involuntarily winced.

"Try not to? This is my _brother_, Klaus! My _brother_! He's done nothing to you, you sadistic-"

The bottle dropped to the floor and jumped up as he himself jumped up. Sunny didn't even see him jerk out his arm, but when she did, it hovered in mid-air for a second, five inches from Isadora's gaping mouth. Sunny would have also jumped up but he only cracked his fingers and let his arm drift slowly down.

"You don't know _anything_," he hissed, the once sharp Baudelaire teeth evident in his sneer. "You don't know anything."

Sunny could close her eyes and shut her ears with her palms and yet still be able to see her brother's face and whitening knuckles and the only thing keeping him from becoming someone so horrendous: the memory of the late Count Olaf. She could scream and flail but could not avoid her brother's twin eyes, and the way they engraved themselves into her mind.

But Isadora apparently tried. She tried everything that Sunny knew couldn't and wouldn't work.

"_I_ don't know anything?" Her demeanor and her voice broke. "_I_ don't know anything?"

Her voice dropped to a suspicious, quieter tone, but since her hair draped, like velvet rain, over her face, Sunny could not see her expression.

"Maybe I don't." Her pale hand trembled in the half-light. "Maybe I'm not a scholar. Maybe the only thing I do read is poetry. And maybe…" She trailed off as papers slid to the floor.

When she did glance up, her eyes were rimmed red.

"Maybe I'm not a fucking inventor."

The next sound Sunny heard was the sound of a fairly heavy chair slamming into the ground.

"The hell did you say," he whispered, voice dangerously low. Isadora refused to back down but shifted her body uneasily, like she unwillingly stumbled unto something stranger, something that Sunny could feel, a seed planted somewhere in that poet's brain of hers. Sunny felt her stomach drop.

"_The catalyst, Sunny. It's something that causes something else to react."_

"_Klaus, she's just a baby. She probably can't retain any of the information you're giving her."_

"_Well, it's nice to actually learn. You should try it sometime. Anyway, Sunny, 'catalyst'. Remember that."_

But before either of them could say anything and before Sunny could jump in, the little figure at the door made a sound. It was not a word, but some type of mangled phrase.

"Yarrghal…" He clutched a plaything in one hand and a small book in the other. Klaus immediately snapped out of his anger to pad over to him, James' tears threatening to fall. Klaus bent down, and when his face met James', he forced a smile.

James still looked unconvinced. "Are you and Izzy fighting?" His small voice was quiet and raspy, as if he'd just been crying. From the looks of his eyes, similar to Isadora's, he probably had been. Klaus tentatively placed a hand on the boy, who flinched a bit, as if he were still afraid of the Klaus he had seen earlier, certainly too much of a villain to be his uncle.

"No, James, we were just talking _improbably_ loud." James grinned a little at that, but as if he didn't want to, and quickly forced the frown on his face. Klaus smiled, genuinely this time, and continued, "I'll tell you what. If we go outside and play, Izzy and I won't be talking anymore. That way, it will be impossible for us to fight."

James' face crinkled into a handsome smile. "You'll play with me? Like football and everything?"

Klaus Baudelaire, suddenly stripped of any drunkenness and conflicting feelings, smiled back.

"And everything."

"Yay!" James speedily zipped to the door and out, then back, peering through the crack just in case his uncle was lying. "I'm _coming_, kid! Just wait for me outside!"

He took one backward glance at the standing, apathetic Isadora. Her lips pursed, she appeared to be deep in thought. Her pretty face revealed nothing now, so he shared a glance with his younger sister. She was curled up, her bare feet sticking out from under her summer dress and her golden hair in abnormally juvenile pigtails. He seemed to have remembered that she was in the room and most likely listening, and she stared back, feigning ignorance, not necessarily for him, but for Isadora's sake.

However, it did not stop them from sharing a glance that only siblings could possibly understand. Klaus found himself looking away because of the present knowledge and understanding in Sunny's eyes.

"I'm off then," he said to no one in particular.

He walked to the door, but as the door creaked open, Isadora spoke.

"You're really bonding with him, aren't you?"

He ignored her as he stepped into the thickening sunlight, each step a temporary imprint in newly sprouted frost.

* * *

Violet wandered around the house's attic, shivering as the front door slammed shut for the second time that day, the first being a particularly messy incident involving two individuals yelling, a broken plate, and a thrown notebook. The vibrations from the slammed door reverberated throughout the whole house, showering Violet softly with dust.

James had been asleep at that time, thanks to a helpful invention or rather, improved upon recipe consisting of warm sweetened milk, cocoa powder, and a dash of cinnamon. He continued to snore lightly throughout the entire argument, although Sunny and Violet weren't so lucky.

"They _always _fight now," she groaned, trying desperately to muffle the sounds with pillows and extra bed sheets. The bed creaked under her older sister, yet not in a very unpleasant way. Violet had turned over, preferring to try to ignore both the bed and noise together without any help.

It was all to no avail, because she heard her name anyway.

She shook her head in the frosty sunlight lining the walls of the attic. 'Not now,' she told herself. 'There'll be plenty of time for thinking later.'

But as she looked down at her gears and pulleys, in the makeshift lab she constructed in their attic, she found her mind drifting to other things.

Violet definitely preferred the attic.

The air was cool there, and the world, quiet. The floorboards squeaked as the heels of her laced boots continuously rapped atop the polished wood, and her dress floated behind her while her feet followed her hands. The rafters flapped occasionally in what light wind passed through the single window embedded in the wooden side of the attic, and the blood rushed to her face and netted arms with every strenuous movement she exercised whilst tweaking a bolt here and there.

She reached her arms behind her back, sweating a little, and unfastened some of her corset hooks, leaving in place, a bare "v" of skin. Violet arched her back and moaned lightly, running the back of her hand over her moist forehead. She found her dress quite cumbersome in instances like these, but truly could not strip down further, her reasons being ones regarding safety in the laboratory area.

'One could never be too safe,' she mused, screwing the square shaped bolt unto the triangular plane of wood. 'Accidents always happen.' She also took into consideration her very young son, assuming that her responsibility concerning the act of being fully clothed in the lab area was successful, that he unconsciously emulated older, wiser people, and would therefore avoid mistakes by learning theirs.

'Perhaps it would be helpful if some of the so-called "older, wiser people" were not drunks that swore like sailors, and poets who can't mind their own damn business…' She quickly banished the last thought, shaking her head. Isadora Quagmire had been nothing but hospitable to her-if not a tad _standoffish_, but she couldn't live with the guilt, really, if she badmouthed her, even in the recesses of her mind.

It was true, but trite. Ever since that last incident-which Violet refused to think about consciously-Isadora had been acting a bit strange, from picking fights to talking excessively, albeit secretly, on the phone with her triplet and Violet's ex-boyfriend, a certain Quigley Quagmire.

Sunny, however, summed up the poet's change most effectively.

"_She doesn't even look at you now, Violet! It's as if she's afraid of something, but she can't quite grasp what it is. She zones out sometimes when I call her; it's as if she's not there, but stuck somewhere else."_

That alone would have been enough information for Violet, who had been quite tortured, knowing for a fact how clever women and girls were, but Sunny _had_ to press on.

"_Violet, at least talk to Klaus! Look at him! He's been drinking so much, lately. Whatever happened out there can be fixed! Whatever happened six years ago can be fixed! Violet, there's always a way. There's always something."_

She slammed her hands down on the table, a vial spilling its viscous contents onto the wood. She did _not_ want to think about anything else, especially _him_. But just as her sudden bout of stomach anxiety was quieting down, a waylaid fuse lit on to her unattended Bunsen burner, shooting a light spray of sparks in every direction.

A spark flew up and bit her finger, and she instantly regretted not wearing more protective gloves. Her finger-less ones worked fine for lace, and she preferred them because of the advantage of unrestrained joint mobility. She liked the freedom in her fingers, enjoyed it, really, because truth be told, inventing things relaxed her.

Instinctively, however, she drew her slightly burnt fingertip up to her lips, pausing a bit as she touched the soft flesh there.

"_Favorite food?"_

"_Strawberries."_

The soft, once bruised, trembling, sinking, muddy, dusty…

Suddenly and again, everything changed and she watched as her head with all its inventions and practical ideas swam away. The memories always had a funny way of coming back.

A flutter of sudden sensations overwhelmed her, and she was altogether aware of her back's exposed skin and the butterfly strokes of her dangling earrings, which she was abruptly and very recently aware of.

"_Favorite flower?"_

"_You."_

She gasped for air as the immediate sensations provoked its consequences.

It was as if someone was showering her with phantom kisses, ghosting down her earlobe to her collarbone, then to her wrist, the lace the only intimate discretion between the air and her bare skin. The attic spun in circles, or mismatched patterns, around her, and she squeezed her thighs, like her eyes, together, in a half-hearted attempt to banish all the incoming thoughts and rough caresses of memories.

"_Do you think we're wrong, Klaus? Do you think this is wrong?"_

"No, no," she exhaled, turning her head rapidly, claustrophobically, as if there actually was a way out.

Gasping, Violet shot a hand out for support, the dust collected there dirtying the inside of her palms. Her hand kept slipping, so she allowed her back to collide with the adjacent wall, splinters and cold wood prickling shallowly into her skin. Her mind was spinning, like the attic, but she resisted vertigo by chanting softly, incomprehensible words of reminder and insult.

"Stop, sick, normal, not normal," she breathed, her lips trembling with anticipation and fright. She slid down the wall, fighting to keep her hands to her sides, all while her body resisted with all its might. The slide, however, undid the corset further, prying open the fabric so that it exposed an even greater "v" of skin. Her right breast peeked out, the rosy tip hardening, involuntarily, in the freezing atmosphere of the attic.

"_Does it hurt?"_

"_Just a little. But keep going."_

There was no going back now and she knew it.

Is this 

Gingerly and reluctantly, her hands gently pushed up the brocade of lace adorning the lower half of the dress, until the hem, ruffled, sat on her waist. She ran a hand through her hair, the netted knuckles buried in her dark strands. Her flighty fingers rested at the base of her satin ribbon, and she lolled her head back, savoring the attic's saturated quiet.

_What it's like to be lonely._

Her left hand, however, trickled like warm water, down to the resistance of her clenched, shaking thighs.

She tipped her finger below the elastic cotton, and sunk under, her mind flashing alarm codes in black and white, until she became lost in memories long since past.

Violet's right hand drifted downwards to the curve of her ear, and she trailed the tip of her finger to the puckered, slight skin of her earlobe. Her other thumb poked its tip into her, and Violet's thighs trembled, milky and taut, in the confines of the creaking attic.

The earrings dangled dangerously in the frosty light, and she closed her eyes to another time and another room.

"_Klaus! Klaus!"_

_Her legs thrashed, milky white like a mermaid's limbs, under the aquatic conditions begetting the basement. He struggled to keep her at bay, finally heaving one leg over her body, and pinning her wrists down with his hands._

_She kept twitching her head slightly as if something was slapping her with invisible palms. Under the dusty rain and shallow urine light, he marveled at her refusal to comply._

"_This is just going to hurt a little bit," he murmured into her neck, dipping his head a bit as his lips grazed her satiny earlobe. A warmth surged through her body, spreading throughout her collarbone and shoulders. He laughed quietly, reveling in the quiet harmony of her breath and awesome discomfort._

"_You said you wanted it," he whispered, edging her legs apart so that his own wedged in-between, filling up nonsensical cracks. He arched his torso up, nose brushing against her cheek. He found her eyes clamped shut, breathing uneven, and blushing._

_He frowned._

"_Vi? I thought you said you were fine with it." _

_His knee pushed forward with his new ministrations, merely adapting to his new position, and Violet gasped suddenly, her eyes shooting open. She peered at him with wavering eyes, much like the seemingly underwater room, when he realized his foot was falling asleep. He reluctantly let her wrists go and sat up, sighing slightly._

"_Look, Vi. You said you wanted it, and what's more, you wanted me to do it." His glasses were slipping down the bridge of his nose and he pushed it back up. "Don't go changing your mind now."_

_They were both quiet for a while, floorboards squeaking as (he strangely noted) Violet's legs pressed and rubbed together. Violet, propped up on her elbows, bringing her breathing back to natural, avoiding anywhere but the gaze of her confused, oblivious brother. He stared back, arching an eyebrow in confusion._

_She traced the squares of sunlight on the grimy floor. "Fine."_

_He grinned and she felt her neck heat up again. "Excellent." The silver glinted between his fingers. "Just close your eyes, Vi. I read about it in a book. I promise it won't be bad. I promise."_

_She complied, her lids fluttering shut. She wore a faint smile as she felt her brother's rough fingers pinch the skin._

"_You promise?" she murmured, yet already knowing the answer._

"_I promise."_

_And he was right._

_A sharp pinch here and there, and it was all over. He gingerly lifted up her torso so she sat in an upright position. His hand fitted perfectly in the small of her back and she blushed again, her blood meeting his similar warmth. His other hand fingered the safety pins dangling from her newly pierced lobes._

"_You look so beautiful, Vi. Like a real woman." She stopped herself from swooning (from the slight pain and from sitting so close to another boy when hormones were clearly raging, be it her brother or not) and she tilted her head and kissed him, gently, on the cheek._

"_Thank you."_

_Now it was his turn to blush._

She convulsed, clenching her free fist tighter so that the knuckles shone white. The dust floated around her as her foot arched, and finally relaxed. A final wind breezed past her collarbone, and the rafters shook with dust.

"Klaus," she whispered, the face of that strange man flitting across her mind's vision.

My invention, she thought, removing her sticky fingers from herself and the underside of cotton.

My fault, she thought, tears just as sticky trailing down her face.


	9. Corrosion

**Disclaimer: A Series of Unfortunate Events belongs to Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler and not me**.

Author's Note: It seems quite pointless right now, but trust me, the whole purpose of this story is based upon my curiosity as to how unfortunate orphans are when they have no villain to run from anymore. Imperfect and three dimensional, quite unlike the characters in the books.

_Nny11_: You're quite right, and one of the worst things in the world is a depressing drunk. And incest and kids…I wonder how everyone is able to manage? Thinking of another sex scene, I almost rear-ended some guy in front of me. Wonderful. Stopped literally an inch from the bumper.

_Michelina_: Very uber hot. Now continue writing, you awesome monger. _Rainbow_: Haha, thank you. In my opinion, I think my story is the only one where it has relatively nothing to do with Olaf but everything to do with him also. Suffice to say, quite sad. At least you made me feel better. _Goth_: Of course you are. You silly person. _Dull as a Coat Hanger_: I was going to dedicate this chapter to you, but then I thought you might want a sexier or more emotional chapter.

* * *

**Chapter Eight:**

**Corrosion**

She was in the tedious process of straightening her hair when a very flushed silhouette appeared and swayed, panting slightly, in the doorway of the attic. One hand shot out to grip the side and her bowed head bobbed up and down, golden silk obstructed the view of her face.

Her hands full with dark hair, and mouth muffled by ribbon, Violet mumbled through her clenched teeth, slim eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

"Sunny?"

Tying her mussed hair with one hand, she removed the ribbon from her mouth trickily, which involved switching the ribbon to her right hand, while her left hand craftily spun the mass of hair upwards. Violet therefore removed the ribbon from her mouth, "What on earth?"

She attempted to move towards her younger sister but stopped as Sunny lifted up a defiant forefinger, while catching her breath on bent knees.

"Hold," she gasped. "On."

Minutes, though it seemed more like seconds, passed, and Violet was acutely aware of the sensitive skin on her inner arm pricking. She drifted her eyes from her curiously excited sister and focused them on the rafters.

The dust floated like pinpricks and tiny boats sailing by the tip of her nose to weaving between each long eyelash on a never-ending breeze. The lace adorning her dress moved with her legs, and she felt strangely aware of the fabric tickling her thighs. A faint blush rose to her exposed collarbone, but the cool air balanced it out right away.

Sunny finally spoke for the effect, darting her curious eyes around the attic and ignoring her sister in the process. "It's freezing," she simply stated, her voice echoing in the wooden expanses. Her eyes went wide in awe as she spied the makeshift lab, a little out of the way in the right hand corner of the attic.

"You brought the burner up here?" she asked incredulously.

Violet only nodded as her face contorted in a pressing way. Sunny tore her eyes from the unordinary lab, and caught her sister's queried face.

The sunlight poured through the single window present in the attic, and Sunny watched as the partial light poured onto her older sister, as if lighting her from the outside in. A firefly, Sunny thought fondly, could not hold a quintessential candle to her beautiful sister.

Ever since she had been a little child, Sunny had, in the quaint ways of young girls, idolized and marveled her lovely older sister, wishing sometimes, albeit enviously, that she would grow up to look exactly like Violet. Unselfish and placated, Violet Baudelaire's apparent physical aesthetics were emphasized by her dutiful attentions to her younger siblings, something so unusual in the world that even Sunny couldn't fathom it later when she started making friends her own age.

She remembered falling asleep to her brother's "fairy tales"; all coincidental really, as he substituted the character's appearances to fit his siblings'. For instance, Sunny would always be the pretty little girl in distress, always being chased after by evil wolves or tricked by drunken tyrants. Klaus would be the wandering sage, and Violet, darling Violet, would always be the beautiful princess. The Quagmires and others would also appear, from time to time as various knights and so forth, but by the time she had turned five, the roles in the stories had taken different, wider turns. First turn: the Quagmires weren't present in the stories anymore. Not that it made much of a difference, but it seemed that they had never existed in their "fairy tale" world. Lastly and most strangely, Sunny found herself falling to sleep to her brother's soothing voice, in which Klaus acted the knight in shining armor and Violet, the beautiful, unchanged princess. If she could remember, and she could, she would remember nodding off and watching her brother and sister share soft glances from her half-lidded eyes. She remembered thinking that even though her brother was reciting the story to her, he meant it to Violet, growing soft-eyed and melting at her shy glances and "accidental" touches. But even _that_ was not the most important thing he changed about those wayward fairy tales.

The next time around there was also a simple salvation, a "happily ever after" at the end.

Sunny had lived her whole life with childlike confidence and hope. She knew then what she knew now, after the death of a despicable guardian and awry plans, that one just needs reassurance, the love, to keep living. And that was all that really mattered, when it all came down to it.

"Sunny?"

The young girl shook her head as she snapped back to reality. Right, she thought. Dinner.

"Sorry," she apologized, the corner of her mouth widening into a smile. At the sight of her older sister's insistent stare, she continued. "Izzy wants to know if you wanted to eat out sometime, you know, somewhere fancy."

"Somewhere fancy?" Violet's brow shot up again, this time in disbelief. "And how could she afford such a place?"

Sunny rolled her eyes, eliciting a "harumph" from Violet. Honestly, her sister could be so practical.

"Izzy's a job, you know."

"Excuse me?"

"She's a poet, so obviously she sells her work and whatnot. All the Quagmires got rich that way. Even Klaus-"

"I _know_ what your brother does, you don't need to constantly remind me," Violet snapped, perhaps a little bit too quickly.

Another flush replaced the one she extinguished before, but this time it refused to seep away with the weather and lingered on her face, giving Violet a sensually adept look. Sunny smiled a little, despite herself, and watched as her sister floundered uncomfortably under her suggestive smirk.

Sunny could see the tops of Violet's breasts, the hastily drawn corset doing nothing but emphasizing the cleavage in the middle. The curves bobbed like lazy jellyfish in the sub-aquatic sea that was the attic. Although quite envious, she took her time in extending her forefinger and smile as Violet's gaze drifted past her finger to her own loose effects, pun not intended.

Sunny managed to suppress a laugh and the sentence, "_I know who'd appreciate those_" as her older sister snapped her head up to glare at her.

"Oh, just shut up, Sunny," she said, exasperated. Her hands automatically moved behind her back to tighten the strings.

At Sunny's exposed tongue she slowly allowed herself to smirk.

"'Izzy's a job', indeed. If only Aunt Josephine could hear you now."

She straightened her posture and exclaimed in a terribly exaggerated but hilarious way, "Grammar, dear Sunny. Mind your grammars."

Then they both giggled, causing more dust to float lazily upwards, the dust apparently ignoring the fact that two giggling girls rudely disturbed their rest. The partially ajar window allowed some breeze to float through, also causing the tip of Sunny's fair nose to change a particular red color. Amidst all the jokes, however, Violet did find time (she always did) to point out obvious facts with older sister mentality and common sense. So even if they did laugh, Violet always bore the burden of having to be the composed sister once everything naturally ended.

But she always found a nice, lenient way to do things.

Violet smiled, tendrils escaping from her ribbon as she smoothed her skirt down further.

"You're cold," she stated, quite mock stern. "Down you go, young lady."

She gestured to the door, tentatively lifting her brow in impatience. Sunny dragged her reluctant feet across the hard wood floor, pouting.

"And you're mean," she retorted, sending her tongue flying out of her mouth instantly. As she neared the doorway, however, she swiveled on one heel and turned her head to her sister. Her cheeks were tinted pink like her nose from the cold, but warmth radiated from her mischievous grin.

"Does that mean you're coming?" she asked, batting her eyelashes for innocent effect. Violet groaned as if completely annoyed, but her small smile also contradicted it.

"If I must," she drawled in an actor's voice, reminiscent of her short-lived child acting career, her eyes lighting up at Sunny's toothy smile.

Sunny imagined her sister, fourteen again, set in white lace and peering up with fathoms of unrecognizable brown from under a veil. Her sister's lips moved as her eyebrow mischievously arched in subtle nostalgia.

"If I absolutely must."

* * *

"I never should have come outside… Fucking freezing…" 

Klaus Baudelaire grumbled to himself as his nephew slammed the ball clear across the frozen field. He supposed he was exaggerating a tad when he thought of the adjective 'frozen', but quickly banished that thought as yet another wind sliced its icy knife on the now numb surface of his cheek. He kept his hands in his trouser pockets for warmth, though highly doubting that such thin fabric that could barely hide an erection could possibly shield his hands from winter weather.

Not that he had such traitorous body afflictions, to be sure.

'Liar,' he instantly thought to himself as he trudged through minuscule snowdrifts, 'You fucking liar.'

The drawn-out late afternoon sky stroke chords in his chest strings, tightening them as he looked up, releasing them as he looked down. He literally found himself unable to breathe at times, not only in awe of the beauty before him, but of beauty, he realized sadly, after him.

The dreams plagued him consistently.

A rude awakening, if one might be so freaking poetic. He often woke up, drenched in sweat and bone hard, thrusting his pelvis up to the shadows that lurked even during the night. The mere memory of her, of her smooth skin flushing the saccharine colors of sunset, of the breath she exhaled, a little bit of her escaping into the warm recesses of his mouth: her sadness, reminiscent of tangy Italian sauce and his name, _Klaus Klaus Klaus_, like he wasn't digging his nails into her back and thrusting harder and harder and _harder_.

He could not even try to pinpoint the exact nature of his desire, of his need. There were torn pages, tons of stacked books hidden in his roughly constructed library, one book in particular that tried to define the circumstances surrounding his need, but usually it was all to no avail.

He did not want to acknowledge what Isadora's glances accused him of. He ignored all the accusing three letter words, all coincidentally grouped in many different texts, from **R**: Religious suppositions to the **M**s: Medical studies. The words, like his dreams, plagued him day and night and even he could see the hypocrisy and tragic humor in his situation.

Books, he realized sardonically, his ultimate love and ultimate downfall.

_Tragedy_, Violet would say, that being one of her favorite words, What an unfortunate _tragedy_.

"Did you see that, Uncle Klaus? It went waaaaay over there!"

Klaus peered through the skeleton bodies of the patch of trees lining the yard's outskirts, only to see his nephew fearlessly plowing beyond the trees. Beyond the trees lay the backyard, and in all its uprooted and frost rotted glory, the stagnant mud puddle, now biding time in a new form of brown ice.

Here the flat ground ended and the rocky terrain abruptly started. To the west of the mud puddle protruded the spiky hats of mountains, only visible on clear summer days, specifically when the temperature hits slightly above average and the oceans, to the east, are calm and when no whitecaps are visibly seen. The mountains, as he often mused to himself, decided when they wanted to be seen and when they couldn't be bothered.

'Spoiled bastards,' he always thought.

"Shoot!"

James' voice echoed in its child-like way from beyond the bushes and the cold. "Uncle Klaus? Can you please come?"

His mouth barely moved, cumulus puffs of exhalation his only physical evidence of speech.

"Sure, kid, I'm coming." He reluctantly lifted his boots in the accustomed manner of walking. The iced ground seemed sticky beneath his practical combat boots. Klaus inhaled in the lower temperature through his nostrils, bubbles of frost erupting in his lungs like some type of menthol ecstatic.

The boy knelt, a few inches and less, away from Klaus' approaching figure.

So fragile, Klaus noted. The young boy looked just about to take flight and vanish into a dozen paper napkins, aimless pieces floating around in the blueberry sky. The curve of his cheek, the puckered dimple just diagonally above the corner of his mouth…everything, every bone structure, every subdued molecule reeked of Violet and, he supposed, hollowed stings following the train of thought, of him.

And what a fantastic uncle _he_ turned out to be.

The boy suddenly turned his head, oblivious to his uncle's morbid fascination. He continued smiling, even in the thickening mist. Klaus felt the knife twist further into his gut.

And then he probably felt something akin to sadness, staring into the crown of the boy's hair. But he didn't really dwell on it.

"Uncle Klaus, look what I found! I think it's one of those arrowhead things from that one book!"

He gestured merrily to the half-covered stone in the frost and leaves. Klaus, in turn, gingerly picked it up with his nimble fingers, examining its sides and polished waves in the waning sunlight.

The tip was pointed, and it was shaped like a tiny spade from those decks of cards.

"An arrowhead, hmm?"

Light glinted off of it like a beacon in a desolated lake. The edges were dull but serrated, and the tiny thing hardly fit on the tip of his thumb. Klaus tossed it several times in the air before catching it mid-flight, and with a grin, offered the arrowhead to James.

James smiled back, his cheeks doughy gobs of glee, and snatched the thing from his uncle. Klaus stood up from his crouching position and ruffled his nephew's dark hair.

"It's an arrowhead," he confirmed, nodding his head seriously, "And you must treat it like one."

James tilted his head quizzically. "How do you treat it like an arrowhead?"

"Throw it to me."

James obeyed, extending his arm back and releasing the tiny stone from his palm. It pivoted and spiraled awkwardly in the winter atmosphere, and James stared upwards at the seemingly endless sky. It looked to him that the arrowhead would almost touch the fading sun, even eclipse it, perhaps, by the suggestion of it. As a result of flying it up into the air, all the light bounced off its shiny surface and proceeded to scatter to the environment around, from the glints of frost lining the weeds to the mirror-like leather coverings of their boots.

It seemed to James that the world had transformed into his mother's kaleidoscope, all stars and falling light. It seemed to Klaus (and even though as a boy he had witnessed this sort of thing so many times) the same, with the exception of the whole kaleidoscope and stars bit.

Seeing the rush of emotions flit across James' awed face, Klaus felt the guilt he experienced earlier fade away, like a trick of the light, and into the frost lining the weeds.

Klaus then reached out and expertly caught the spinning arrowhead. It landed flat on the skin of his tough palm, the tip pointing coincidentally towards his wrist.

At James' disappointed face, he laughed, the most genuine and heartfelt laugh he had ever heard himself do for the longest time. It surprised him, but brightened his nephew. Klaus peered at him through soft eyes and hard lenses, observing the strange boy before him.

He smiled.

"Catch," he said, and threw the arrowhead toward James.

They played that game for an hour or two and until the night sky overwhelmed the afternoon, into some sort of intricate mix of evening and daytime. Klaus spoke hesitantly first.

"All right, James. Time to head inside." He laughed as the boy pouted.

"Time to head inside, come on," he shouted, the corners of his mouth stretching upwards so hard that his jaw hurt. "And don't make too much of a fuss."

James crossed his arms and continued pouting.

"Well, at least make an effort!"

James continued to pout.

"Any effort!" Klaus ran a hand through his hair, sighing. He looked at James incredulously.

"You really _are_ like your mother, aren't you? Insolent little-"

"Baudebrat?"

Violet walked slowly toward them, her eyes at the ground as she dodged the wet and partially frozen blades of grass. The hem of her dress grazed the tops of her knees, and the bare skin between her boots and her dress softly peeked out from between the two fabric comparisons. His eyes drifted up to the top of her corset in an unconscious action only to find her right hand pressed against what would have been exposed to her brother…what he had ran his lips over, the delicate skin. He traveled further up with his eyes, and was startled to see her own eyes following his ascent up her body.

The winter wind spiraled around her body, around his body, and the quiet world, Klaus and Violet both thought, started up its music again.

She instantly regretted arriving there, but stopped short as she saw the reason and her eyes grew soft again.

She was suddenly attacked by two small arms encircling the bare skin of her knees, his head nuzzling her dressed thighs, and Klaus could see her smile, if only for a moment.

"Baby," she whispered, her left hand stroking her son's head. He responded to her caress by staring up at her. His sharp teeth gleamed in the soft evening light.

"Will you stay with me and Uncle Klaus?" The arms around her legs constricted tighter. "Please?" he asked, burying his face into her dress.

Violet bent down slightly and cupped her son's cheek in her palm. Klaus' shivered, unsure of everything and anything but the fact that he was just watching Violet become an older sister and a mother again.

"For a little while, my darling," she cooed after a silence. Klaus warily watched her as if she were some sort of snake specimen in their late Uncle Monty's research facilities.

She still hadn't forgiven him yet, and perhaps he knew already that she still hadn't forgiven herself either.

But as he watched her dress and familiar ribbon float around the evening's beginning breeze, he couldn't help not thinking for once. Violet had been staring either at her son or straight outwards into the horizon. The silence lingered on for a few minutes until James spoke.

"We found an arrowhead," he exclaimed happily.

"Really?" Violet feigned enthusiasm and smiled. "What color was it?"

"Brown," Klaus interjected.

The sky above them, like the world, continuously moved as the colors started to fade into a deeper blue.


	10. Rhetoric

**Disclaimer: I told you again and again. Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler owns these here characters and their little plots/flashbacks (well, some of them).**

Author's Note: Yay. Huzzah. _The plot is finally moving._ A bit. Wait, plot? What plot?

_Unknown_: Thanks, you nice person, you. I personally constantly re-evaluate my reasons for updating this story, but hey, different strokes for different folks. _Nny11_: I am definitely dedicating a sexy chapter to you. And yes, drivers should understand. "Consensual fucked up incest is hot, expect getting rear-ended!" I swear I will make a bumper sticker, then send it to hillbillies. And by the way, I headed over to Adultfanfiction, and simply adored "Mondays". _DACH_: Sarcasm? No way. You also get a sexy chapter just for reviewing and writing such sexy Ron/Ginny stories. _Goth_: Oh my yes, I will continue. Every review is precious to me, I can't fathom why some authors who get 567 reviews sometimes abandon their stories.

* * *

**Chapter Nine:**

**Rhetoric**

_"A loaded God complex, cock it and pull it."_

_-"Sugar, We're Going Down"_

Sweat trickled in slim rivulets down the curve of his cheek, and his cheeks were a faint pink. She could see the angled smoothness to them even in the approaching darkness.

Her son and his uncle played those little games for another half hour as she looked on, occasionally shooting words of encouragement and smiles to the little boy. Otherwise, Violet was looking everywhere, and avoided pointing her eyes directly or even near her younger brother, who currently was arching his torso backwards to land a particularly difficult catch.

Like all younger brothers, he, of course, caught it.

Her son grinned in awe and admiration as he watched his uncle exert himself to the point of perspiration.

His shirt clung to his skin, his fit body outlining the shirt's distorted shape. Violet chewed at her bottom lip, forcing her eyes to her son.

Now is not the time, she argued with herself as her brother's lithe body collided with the ground.

Instinctively and panicked, she shouted, "Are you all right?"

She'd forgotten, for the moment, that she hadn't yet forgiven him.

He sat up, rubbing his shoulder with his knuckles. He double-checked the skin beneath them, rolling up his sleeve. Violet watched as the muscles in his upper arm moved like smooth machinery, like the inventions she kneaded and transformed underneath her own hands. He barely had a bruise, although he examined the sore spot for a couple of seconds, leaving Violet Baudelaire to her own vices.

Which, of course, Violet, being the older sister, always refused.

"Let me see," she insisted, increasing her pace towards her brother. Klaus glanced up with wary eyes, shaking his head defiantly.

"It's fine, it's fine. It's just a scratch."

Violet ignored his excuses, her bare knee grazing the ground as she knelt.

"So said Tybalt," she scoffed. Klaus lifted an eyebrow as he breathed in the familiar perfume of his sister's hair.

"You mean Mercutio."

She moved her head up and glared at her brother. "Whoever."

He narrowed his eyes back, and she could smell the intoxicating scent of his sweat. It clouded her mind for a second.

"Shakespeare, that's 'Whoever'. Honestly, if you had ever read at least one-"

He sharply inhaled as her fingers floated on the outside of his body, just barely touching his exposed skin.

The sensations rippled through him like sixteen agitated butterflies all pattering their wings against his arm and through the hole that comprised of his stomach. Her compromising body lingered so elegantly and sensually near his own that he had to ball his hands into fists, pulling up strands of grass from beneath his palms. He couldn't bring himself to pull out the roots, however. The roots, stood on, underneath the surface, too entangled for anything any longer.

The touch itself was enough to drive him mad and utterly and completely hard, the latter of which he resisted to all his might.

Apparently, that wasn't exemplary enough.

Violet Baudelaire sucked in _her _breath as similar sensations raced through her veins, but she practically tried to ignore them. But his lips were very close to hers and their noses were almost touching. Their very similar features hovered in the winter air for what seemed like hours. Days. Months.

Klaus was close enough to see his sister's bottom lip quiver slightly, close enough to blow a wayward eyelash, then resting on her high cheekbone, into the outer limits of their irresponsible aura. Violet was also close enough to touch the uneven freckles in her brother's pupils with her nose (not that any sudden need should arrive to allow her to do such a dangerous and unclean thing), and close enough to press her lips to his protruding Adam's apple and perhaps his quivering bottom lip (also, should any need arrive to allow her to do such a dangerous and unclean thing).

"Is Uncle Klaus okay?"

And apparently and ironically, being _relatively_ close enough often led to disastrous consequences, Violet thought as she heard her son's pleas and worried voice for the first time in hours. Days. Months.

Violet snapped out of her daze.

He instinctively moved his face towards hers, but she pulled back, albeit heavily. He could see that her breathing had quickened and she pushed her weight back on her lower body, arching her foot so that she crouched on tip-toe.

"He's fine, James," she breathed heavily, her bent arms at her sides and all her body weight on the balls of her feet.

"He's fine," she repeated, her chest softly heaving up and down as her blood pressure spiked uncertainly.

She then pretended to look very interested in the grass and dew now sprinkled on the lower half of her dress, whatever part she knelt in.

She dusted it off with her hands, and her brother watched as the backs of her smooth inventor's hands ran up and down her body. She arched her eyebrow at his stare, but then caught the sight of the front of his trousers.

"Klaus!" Violet gasped.

She gaped openly at the tell-all bulge between his familiar legs, the arrowhead long forgotten, the stone bathing in the sweat of the young Baudelaire's hand. Tears pooled up in Violet's fluttering eyes, and she placed a hand to her mouth like she didn't know quite why.

She was sure it wasn't because she was ashamed; rather, the tears were just the reaction of the hundred mixed emotions bubbling in her torso. The cause, well, that seemed rather obvious.

Violet had to pretend to look away for Klaus to fix himself, as shocked as she was.

He was going insane, now, and both Klaus and Violet Baudelaire knew it.

"James?" she tried out in a quivering voice. "James, will you be a darling and run inside? I need to speak to your Uncle." Violet pulled her eyes away from her brother's handsome face. "James, will you please go?"

She could hardly see her son in the impending darkness and his silhouette posed awkwardly against the sinking sun. The vague orange glow engulfed his outline, and the darkness prevented her from seeing her son's features, but Violet reckoned she could see them in her mind anyway.

Mothers, she remembered telling her brother once, have an uncanny sixth sense when it all boils down to their children, and sometimes they even seem like a different species as a result.

And like the siblings shared a same mind, Klaus was thinking such a thing. Violet, her floating hair in disarray and angled elbows and puckering lips, looked to him like something else altogether, a nocturnal animal, three-dimensional.

Like she was more than just Violet and simply, just his sister.

"But I don't want to go. I want to stay here with you and uncle!" His lower lip trembled and he stubbornly crossed his arms to his chest. "It's not even dark yet," he pleaded.

Violet's eyes issued back and forth from her son to Klaus. She lifted a smooth hand to her son's face and cupped his chin. James leaned into her touch unconsciously.

Klaus unusually felt pangs of jealousy mar his embarrassment and curiosity as he watched the tender scene, some part of him wishing that it was he whom Violet was touching. He could see her eyes soften, the term "tender-eyed" coming to mind as he dug his nails into the ground.

"Baby, go inside," she softly ordered. "I need to talk to your uncle."

James shifted on his toes, then swiveled around, sort of defiantly, then started dragging his feet up to the house which was sitting quite alone in the curve of the grassy mound. They both watched, Klaus' heart pumping faster and Violet's doing the same, at the boy's floating hair (reminiscent of his mother's) and small form ambling up the tiny hills all blanketed in near darkness. They watched until the boy stopped, took one last look at the unfortunate siblings, and entered through the opened wooden door.

The air was suddenly much chillier and the world, much louder.

"He is a darling boy, isn't he?" Her music box-like voice streamed slowly forth, like molasses in the cracks of his diminishing sanity.

He spoke without conviction, without sarcasm, this time. "You're a darling girl."

He observed her indifferently through heavy-lidded eyes, his mouth partially open and semi-partially inviting. His apathy surprised her but his words shocked her even more.

"Klaus-" she began hesitantly.

"Are you going to tell me to shut the fuck up now?" he interrupted. "We're here to talk, aren't we? Isn't that why you sent the kid away?" He shifted his body, bringing his left leg from under him and swinging it forward so that it rested in a new position. He leaned his face dangerously close to hers, and she closed her eyes, shivering at the nearness of warmth and morning stubble prickling her chin. The tip of his nose ever so slightly made contact with her cheek, and her eyes fluttered open just as immediately as they had closed, only to find herself staring into the angles of her brother's face. His lips brushed the corner of her own trembling lips and dimples.

"So let's talk," he muttered, hot breath like steam evaporating into the creases and chapped cracks of his sister's face and sanity.

"Klaus…Lord…"

Her fingers seemed to move of their own accord, hesitantly touching the skin above her brother's collarbones, causing his breath to catch in his throat. The touch alone seemed to engulf her body with flames: flames at her sides licking up her thighs, her nerves lit afire like the house they lived in so long ago…her parents.

_Their_ parents.

"No, Klaus, no."

She shot her arm back to her side, resisting the urge to scramble away. She pulled away from his nearness, wincing slightly as the cool atmospheric air embraced her cheek, like a half-hearted slap to her face. The sting, she noticed, of being solely and hopelessly alone. She lowered her gaze so that it rest on her brother's chest and not his accusing eyes.

"We aren't children anymore, Klaus. Scientifically and with all probability, we aren't." She breathed in and out, leveling her oxygen intakes, cursing the cruel weather and its vague impairments. Violet ignored the blood pooling in her cheeks and gained enough strength to lift her chin and look her younger brother in his damned accusing eyes.

"We can't stop pretending that what we did was right."

Klaus snorted, his eyes betraying nothing. "Violet, darling, you stopped pretending quite a while ago. In fact, I was never aware that you actually started."

"Klaus," Violet hissed, her eyes darting back and forth from her brother to the house, "Stop it. You're being immature again."

"And me being immature is equivalent to? Oh, _right_. Fucking your brother over and over during a period of time, then leaving him as soon as boredom and conscience started to set in." His voice grew rougher, and the edges around it, sharper. He pushed his face dangerously close to hers again, yet this time, there was no avoiding it. His left hand grasped the back of her head and his right tilted her chin up so that she was forced look him in the eyes.

This time his eyes exposed more: hurt, excruciating pain, accusation, lust, jealousy, anger, affection. She felt herself melt and simmer under his fragility. The sun and son were both nowhere to be seen, and in the blackness of night, all they both had was the ability and weakness of touch.

"Too bad I loved you, right?"


	11. Ego

**Disclaimer: A Series of Unfortunate Events belongs to Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket, so don't sue me. I'm only using the characters, and if he says to take it down, I will.**

Author's Note: The first bit in italics is actually from a deleted scene in the movie, which I took the time to dorkily write down at one point or another. Lack of updates: Bitch at my minimum wage job. _Nny11_: It's been awhile. I am still going to continue it, you know. If only of respect to you. Maha. Anyway, of course I loved Mondays. God, the story was, in two words: fucking sexy. But that's because human nature appeals immensely to me and you sure as hell got it right on the unexplainable money_. Goth F_.: As I do you, my sexy reviewer-friend. _Zycho_: Don't worry about hamminess; I always fuck up on that area. _Raining Seas_: I really need to download that song then. And then read your new stories, which I'm sure I'm going to love. _Waltz_: As soon as I get my paycheck, I'm reading it. By the way, I amour you, if that's any consolation. Movie world, since they seem so young and innocent in the book.

* * *

**Chapter Ten:**

**Ego**

"_Well, I got a good feeling about this." _

_He walked closer inside the cramped little room, his footsteps bleeding spurts of dust. There was no light; the windows were boarded up, and the floorboards were damp from some strange rain._

"_Klaus."_

"_What? He seems like a great guy." Klaus sneered, spinning on his heel so that the flurries of dust surrounded them all. "I mean, the place could use some fixing up but that's nothing some lumber, paint and rat traps couldn't fix."_

_He turned his head and slammed his suitcase on the first lumpy mattress he could find. The only one._

"_Oh, one bed. Fantastic."_

"_Klaus, you're scaring her." He darted his eyes back to his two sisters, still standing in the doorway of the room. He stepped forward, accusingly. "Oh, I'm scaring her?"_

"_Violet, what are we doing here?" Klaus asked her, his eyes pleading and jaded for such a boy his age. _

_She cast her eyes to the grimy floorboards. "Don't do this."_

"_Violet, our parents are gone. Our house was burned down, and now we're stuck with this guy." She could feel the heat exuding from his face, and she shifted on the balls of her feet. "These things don't just happen." _

_They were far too close._

"_Well, obviously they do," she retorted, her own face heating. "Okay? But we're going to get through with this, and we're going to be fine."_

_He stepped back, gesturing to the cruel amenities of the room. "Violet, look at this place!"_

"_I can fix it."_

"_How?" An uncertain smile played at her lips as she stared, hard, into the eyes of her little brother._

"_There's always something," she said as he sighed and sat down on the creaky bed, "Listen. We're it now. It's just us, and we have to make this work." She followed him, carrying Sunny, adding another weight to the broken bed. He turned to her._

"_There must be a reason we're here."_

"_I wish I could believe that," she agreed. At the sight of her brother's downcast face, though, she struggled for words and reassurance._

"_Maybe it's not as bad as it seems," she suggested, although her words seemed as unsure as her brother's expression. "Maybe he just doesn't make a very good first impression."_

_Klaus raised a skeptic brow. "Do you wanna try another take on that?" he mimicked, a Count Olaf-like lilt to his now completely exaggerated actor's face. "Quickly, while it's fresh in your mind."_

_Violet giggled, smiling for the first time in days_

They were now shrouded completely in darkness, and Violet had just started to comprehend the words her brother so defensively uttered. The words elongated themselves, detached, danced, questionably intertwined themselves over and over in the gears spinning and colliding in her mind. They prevented the gears from turning so, and she raked her fingers through her mess of dark hair and ribbon, wondering what and why the world could do her so much wrong and right at the same time.

_Too bad I loved you, right_

The hand positioned below her chin forced it up again as her whole body drooped, and she complied, staring up once again against her will at her brother's expressive eyes. His eyes were glazed over with a barely quieted lust, and she unfortunately, from her demobilized head, could not look away, which was something she dearly desired to do.

"Why are you doing this?" she whispered, her eyes searching his in vain. Her fingers were clutching his shirt, something she just realized she was doing. The cotton wrapped around her slim fingers, and she tugged it uncertainly, a just movement to keep her movements somewhere other than her thoughts.

"I don't mean to," he whispered before placing his lips onto her

…jaw line, incidentally, and he pulled back just as soon as her mind registered what he had just said. Violet's body shuddered as her brother's chapped lips grazed her jaw, but even that only lasted a moment before her angled face met with the air's chill embrace yet again.

The hand behind her head seemed to have disappeared, what had actually been her balance for the last few moments, and she struggled with equilibrium, albeit momentarily, before questioning her brother with quizzical eyes.

Her body had betrayed her again, but she forced herself the words, "Thank you", for what she really wasn't thankful for, but merely a sentence loosely based on ethics and courtesy. What she could feel, truly, was the feeling of her muscles twitching in annoyance, especially and most shamefully (she thought, the familiar pool of blood rushing to her cheeks) the lips, of which she had no real control over at this point.

'_Loved_', she thought, 'isn't that the past tense of love?' She reassured herself by promising to look it up, as silly it sounds. Then again, denial is always a silly thing.

All in all, however, was the fact that she was still the big sister and will always remain as such.

"Thank you," she repeated, ignoring the slight twinge of hurt as Klaus leaned away from her, as if to give her space. His eyes were unreadable, yet familiar, but Violet was too caught up in her mixed emotions that she couldn't and didn't dwell on it.

But what she did know was that he meant yes, I'll stop. Even if it means hurting me

_And hurting you._

She shook her head. Where the bloody hell did that come from?

So the silence lasted, she guessed, for a couple of minutes. Violet tried harder to make out things in the enveloping darkness, but her eyes kept darting back to her brother's form.

No, she wasn't afraid of the dark, she knew. But she used to be.

"I'm sorry. I don't carry candles." His voice cut through the oncoming night like a beacon in a Lacrymose fog. "Or matches," he added. She nodded because she understood.

Her voice softly sliced through the same fog, unconsciously and precisely and a bit startled that her strange brother initiated conversation.

"Neither do I."

There would have been another silence, if Klaus hadn't been so sick of them already.

"Did you know human beings are an evolutionary species?"

Violet started at the seemingly out of place question. "Pardon me?"

"Humans. Like butterflies."

Violet's brow furrowed at the mention of two such nouns. "What on earth do butterflies and humans have anything to do with matches and candles?"

The ground puckered upwards (or her feet moved downwards); either way, the moist undergrowth lapped the underside of her bare feet. She tilted her head at him, observing her brother truly for the first time in days at his absurd implications. Since when had he turned from scholar to half-wit? As if answering her, he stood up, tugging at his trousers-the erection had long since faded but the gleam in his eyes had not-and smiling enigmatically,

A bit sexily, if Violet could be so daring.

No. She absolutely can't and absolutely won't. So, No.

He thrust out a sun-darkened hand, the pattern of freckles and faint sun-spots acting as obvious constellations to Violet.

She couldn't help but feel a twinge of utter desolation at his smile. She gained a part of her brother back, yes, but for what price?

This is what she wanted, right?

He smiled at her like nothing had happened in the past month and if time had not come between them. He smiled at her like a stranger and a simple brother, both someone else at the same time.

Violet, his sister, reached out for his hand tentatively, her eyes betraying nothing but her wariness. The internal crisis gnawed at her bowels.

Did we both give up?

She clutched his hand and felt herself being hoisted into the nighttime breeze and into unsuspecting darkness. She fell into him, but he stiffened and pulled himself back so only his lips barely touched her ear.

Alas, propriety!

"Nothing whatsoever," he whispered, albeit brotherly. "Nothing whatsoever."

The stars blanketed themselves out like beauty on a darkened bay. Comets scattered throughout the skies, blooming cosmic flowers in an evergreen forest of night.

_Loved_, the past tense of love.

She felt like vomiting.


End file.
